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PAUPERIZING THE RICH 



AN INQUIRY INTO THE VALUE AND SIGNIFICANCE OF 

UNEARNED WEALTH 

TO ITS OWNERS AND TO SOCIETY 



BY 

ALFRED J. ] 



$art L— JEfjc IBtagnosts 

AN ESSAY IN THE CONSERVATIVE CRITICISM OK THE 
PRESENT SOCIAL STATUS 



Part BL-£fje fttmetig 

AN ESSAY IN THE CONSTRUCTIVE EMENDATION OF 
EXISTING INSTITUTIONS 



Pfjtlatielpfjta : 
T. S. LEACH & COMPANY 

29 NORTH SEVENTH STREET 
1899 






■f 






Copyright. 1899, by Alfred J. Ferris. 




>- 



Upspringing from the ruined Old 
Isaiv (he New. 

The outworn rile, (he old abuse, 

The pious fraud transparent grown, 
The good held captive in the use 
Of wrong alone, — 

These trait their doom, from that great law 
Which makes the past time serve to-day ; 
And fresher life the world shall draw 
From their decay. 

God works in all things ; all obey 

His first proindsion from, the night: 
Wake thou and icalch ! the world is gray 
With morning light! 

— Whittier, " The Reformer.' 



There is an instinctive sense, however obscure and yet in- 
articulate, that the whole constitution of property, on its present, 
tenures, is injurious, and its influence on persons deteriorating 
and degrading ; that truly, the only interest for the consider- 
ation of the State, is persons ; that the highest end of government 
is the culture of men : and if men can be educated, the institutions 
will share their improvement. 

—Emerson, " Politics." 



PREFACE. 

The initial task attempted in the following pages is 
to present a new, or at least a neglected, point of 
view. 

The current discussion of social problems is, it seems 
to me, seriously befogged by a mere confusion in 
terms. Things which are in essence the same are 
given different names, and the disguise so conferred 
seems to be for all practical purposes complete. I 
have therefore felt moved to apply to the considera- 
tion of these questions the somewhat revolutionary 
measure of calling similar things by the same name. 
This constitutes my point of view. 

The satisfactory presentation of a point of view, 
however, necessarily involves the more or less com- 
plete exposition of the field of view. This is my war- 
rant for assuming to rewrite certain chapters of 
political economy. Little as I covet the task it is yet 
evident that the outlook I am seeking to introduce 
demands a considerable recasting of current economic 
theory. I have therefore tried to indicate, though 
necessarily in the merest outline, the theoretical basis 
upon which my thesis must rest for economic justifi- 
cation. 

In undertaking this I do not in the least claim to 
have met the requirements of a formal treatise, 



viiii PREFACE. 

although I am convinced that the principles on which 
I build would richly repay adequate formal statement. 
I have simply taken the various branches of inquiry 
at the level of popular discussion, and attempted to 
range them around my main position into a fairly 
coherent system. If in so doing I have freely used 
the ideas of other men without due acknowledgment, 
they are, in most cases, those which are so well known 
as to make formal credit superfluous. 

The point of view herein advocated is primarily 
critical in its outlook upon society. All fair criticism 
of existing society, however, is necessarily a mere 
prelude to an attempt at constructive work; and I 
have not allowed the plentiful supply of reform 
measures in the field to withhold me from formulating 
mine. 

The scheme as a whole may very well strike the 
reader as highly incongruous. It assuredly is incon- 
gruous, judged by accepted models; but it is so 
advisedly and of set purpose. It is an attempt to 
make peace between the extreme left and the extreme 
right. It aims to be as conservative as the Liberty 
and Property Defense League and as radical as the 
Socialists. It accepts, at least in spirit, the aspirations 
of the most visionary reformers, and attempts to reach 
their substantial fulfilment by a measure which yet 
respects the great underlying principles of the existing 



PREFACE. ix. 

social system, and which will stand the closest scrutiny 
of the practical intellect. 

That the making of peace between these apparent 
incongruities is the condition of achieving real progress 
toward solving the social problem, is my firm belief. 
All thoughtful men nowadays have, and are deeply 
influenced by, more or less definite visions of a re- 
generated society. But a large part, if not the bulk, 
of such men are evidently, like myself, limited in 
their conceptions by the facts of their experience ; and, 
perhaps by reason of the long immersion of their 
faculties in practical affairs, are absolutely unable to 
accept as real the hope embodied in the current meas- 
ures of the root-and-branch reformers. 

One point which the following pages may have 
failed to make clear I wish to emphasize beyond the 
possibility of misapprehension. The underlying phil- 
osophy of this book contains no strain of pessimism. 
I do not believe the world is growing worse; on the 
contrary, in spite of the manifest abundance of re- 
actionary movements and tendencies, I firmly believe 
it is steadily growing better. Our social evils are 
growing imen durable not because they are growing 
worse, but because their persistence shows a great 
waste of ameliorative power. But one of the most 
hopeful signs of the present time is the waxing public 
sense of the gravity of these evils, and the rapid 



x. PREFACE. 

growth of a strong desire and intelligent determina- 
tion to abate them. It is the existence of these im- 
portant allies that encourages me to bring forward 
as a strictly practical measure a proposal for the utili- 
zation of this wasted power, — a proposal which is 
cither utterly visionary or hopelessly reactionary ac- 
cording to the standpoint whence it is viewed, and 
which I therefore venture to believe is the golden 

mean. 

A. J. F. 

Philadelphia, February, 1899. 



SYNOPSIS. 



Preface, 
Contents, 



vn. 



xxi. 



Pauperising t!je &tcfj. 

Part I. — The Diagnosis: 

Introductory. — Charity and Charity: 

Chapter I., ■* 

Book I. — Preliminary Statement of Principles: 

Chapters II- I V., n 

Book II.— The World's Charitable List : 

Chapters V.-X, s5 

Part II.— The Remedy: 

Book III.— The People's Heritage: 

Chapters XI.-XVII, nl 

Book IV. — The Working of the Leaven: 

Chapters XVIII.-XXIII, ■. ... 297 

Conclusion.— Fine Clay and Common Clay: 

Chapter XXIV., M 6 

Index, W 



CONTENTS. 



CONTENTS. 



Part 3L— K\)t ©tagnosts* 

I.— Introductory. — Charity and Charity, . . 



BOOK I. 

preliminary statement of principles. 

II. — Eewards of Merit and Kewards by Favor, . . 11 
III. — Helps to Work and Helps to Idleness, ... 19 
IV. — Seed-Grain and Bread, 24 

BOOK II. 

THE WORLD'S CHARITABLE LIST. 

17 , — The Minor Charities of Condescension. — Pauper- 
izing by Withholding, 35 

VI.— The Minor Charities of Equality. — Prepara- 
tion for Pauperizing, 46 

VII.— The Medium Charities. — The Gift of Seed- 
Grain, 55 

VIII.— The Major Charities. —Pauperizing by Excess, 66 

IX.— Keview.— What we Seek ; What we have Seen, 91 

X. — Whence Cometh Help? 107 



CONTENTS. 



fart M.— %\z Ecmetm- 

BOOK III. 

THE PEOPLE'S HERrrAGE. 

XL — The People's Property in Ideas, 121 

XII. — The Present Beneficiaries, 137 

XIII. —The Defrauded Heirs, 158 

XIV. — The Redistribution of the Income, 181 

XV. — A New Charity of Equality, 201 

XVI. — Pitfalls, Real and Imaginary, . 227 

XVII. — "That New World which is the Old," . . 263 

BOOK IV. 

THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. 

XVIII. — The New Aspect of Progress, 297 

XIX.— Competition and Cooperation, 305 

XX. — Crises. — Overproduction. — The Unemployed, 326 

XXI. — The Conflict of Capital and Labor, .... 348 

XXII. — " Progress and Poverty " Reviewed, .... 384 

XXIII. — The Hunger for Dead Sea Fruit, 397 



XXIV. — Conclusion. — Fine Clay and Common Clay, . . 406 



The great problem which the next century will have seriously 

to take in haud and finally solve is this : Are rich men likely to 

prove of any real social use, or will it be better to abolish the 

institution? 

— Frederic Harrison. 



PART T.-THE DIAGNOSIS. 



INTRODUCTORY 



CHAPTEK I. 

INTRODUCTORY. CHARITY AND CHARITY. 

Our friend Mrs. B. has a large and interesting 
" charitable list." Of course it is made up wholly 
of the deserving. Mrs. B. does not believe in the 
haphazard bestowal of charity, and each recipient of 
her bounty has undergone a rigid investigation. 

Judge therefore, if you can, of the shock which 
Mrs. B. experienced when she discovered that a favor- 
ite protege, a man who had a family of nine children 
to support on " odd jobs," had almost entirely ceased 
working, and found life so far supportable on his pen- 
sion from her that he could hardly be brought to 
accept an occasional " odd job," even when it came 
without his seeking it. 

" To think of it ! " she exclaimed. " The wretch 
had come to count on my allowance regularly, just 
as if it belonged to him, and wouldn't lift his finger to 
help himself. He had become completely pauperized." 



The trouble which Mrs. B. experienced in her at- 
tempts to do good with her money is of a kind which 
perplexes charitable workers everywhere. Every 
person who has had large experience in attempting 
to help the poor has learned to beware of pauperizing 
them as he would beware of communicating the 
plague. 

Help which saps a person's ability and determina- 



o INTRODUCTORY. 

tion to help himself,— which pauperizes him,— is not 
merely not help: — it is deadliest hindrance. Pauper- 
izing is simply killing, in an economic sense. The 
pauperized man has no ambition, energy, foresight, 
solicitude for the future, — only inertia. He is, econ- 
omically considered, a corpse. 

On the other hand, help which increases one's ability 
and fortifies his determination to help himself is not 
merely real help; — it is double help, or help multi- 
plying itself. 

These conclusions are almost axiomatic. We know 
of no denial of them; in fact any weighty denial of 
them is hardly conceivable. They are the consensus 
of all enlightened charity. Inexperienced enthusiasts 
often ignore them; men and women of ripe knowl- 
edge never, we believe, either ignore or deny them. 

These principles we may safely accept as established 
truth: upon them we may lean when confused by the 
complexity of these difficult problems. 



The purpose of this book is to investigate the 
World's Charitable List. 

For as surely as Mrs. B. maketh her periodical 
rounds does our World have a vast charitable list. 
Though constantly protesting that her income is not 
sufficient to pay decent wages to her workers, she yet 
contrives to bestow a surprisingly large part of it upon 
those who toil not nor spin, and another very large 
part upon those who toil but lightly yet are rewarded 
lavishly. 

It is these favored ones that constitute the World's 
Charitable List. They are most various in degree 



Chap. i. CHARITY AND CHARITY. 3 

and kind, of all ranks of society, all colors, all grades 
of intelligence. The names of Mrs. B.'s proteges are 
found on this list, mingling familiarly with those of 
royal dukes ; those of the tramp and pauper touch 
elbows with the Bugle's list of Great American 
Heiresses. One bond alone unites them ; all can 
truthfully say, " Others have labored, and we are 
entered into their labors." 



But here we are asked with some asperity, " By 
what warrant do you call this a charitable list ? Its 
upper portion, at least, is an imposing array of the best 
families in the land, who never accepted a cent of 
charity in their lives." 

To which we reply that we have a warrant for 
calling a spade a spade, and none other seems to us 
necessary. The individuals in question did not earn 
their money, — that part of it under consideration: 
it was given to them by persons who wished to help 
them. If this is not charity, we are unable to frame 
a definition of the word.* 

To be sure the givers did not care to insist that it be 
called charity; were in fact anxious that it should not 
be. But this cannot alter the main fact. A spade 
remains a spade in utter disregard of a social conven- 
tion that it be called a kingly crown. 

Ignoring conventional distinctions, then, the classi- 
fication of wealth is very simple: — either a man has 

* The etymology of the word yields us no assistance here be- 
cause it throws light only upon its meaning as used in the New 
Testament. The sense in which it is popularly used is entirely 
different, and requires no explanation. We have used it in the 
popular sense. 



4 INTRODUCTORY. 

earned his wealth or he has received it through charity. 
The essential question of its being or not being charity 
is not in the least affected by the fact that it was given 
to him by a parent or near relative, or by his receiving- 
it after the death of the donor, or by any other similar 
consideration. 

It undoubtedly has an important influence on the 
effects of charity, however, that it is given, not con- 
descendingly, but as between equals. The charity 
which usually monopolizes the name gives as to an 
inferior, and considers that a stigma attaches to the 
acceptance of its gifts. This charity w r e shall here- 
after call the Charity of Condescension when we have 
need to distinguish it from the other charity of the 
World's Charitable List, which other charity we shall 
call, in default of a better name, the Charity of 
Equality. 

But despite this important distinction, and the 
wealth and social standing of those whose names head 
its list, the Charity of Equality is in its essence on a 
par with its humble sister. We freely admit that its 
list is an imposing one; nevertheless, it is manifestly 
a charitable list. 

But here again we are rather sharply reminded: 
" If this be a charitable list it certainly cannot be 
maintained that there is any disgrace in receiving 
charity." 

This we grant without demur. There is no disgrace 
in receiving charitable help, either from the Charity 
of Condescension or the Charity of Equality. There 
is no disgrace in being on Mrs. B.'s charitable list; 
no more and no less disgrace in being on the W T orld's 



Chap. i. CHARITY AND CHARITY. 5 

Charitable List. Receiving a gift of two dollars a 
week does not disgrace one of Mrs. B.'s pensioners; 
receiving a gift of two million dollars a year does not 
disgrace the rich man's heir. 

In fact there is only one form of disgrace connected 
with receiving charity, and this lies in receiving it un- 
profitably. This disgrace applies with equal force to 
Mrs. B.'s list and the World's list. If Mrs. B.'s pro- 
tege fail to make a good use of her gifts, — if he be 
pauperized by his allowance, — it is a disgrace to him, 
and a charge against Mrs. B.'s wisdom in placing the 
money in his hands. If the rich man's heir fail to 
make a good use of his inherited millions, — if he al- 
low them to support him in luxurious and unprofit- 
able idleness, — in short, if he be pauperized by them : 
— then indeed the charity which he has dishonored is 
turned into a disgrace to him and a charge against 
the wisdom of the social arrangements which have 
placed it in his hands. 

It is in the light of these ideas that we wish to in- 
vestigate the World's Charitable List. It is this form 
of disgrace and the corresponding form of justification 
which we wish to consider. We are not concerned 
with any imaginary stigma belonging to the Charity 
of Condescension as such. According to our ideas 
charity disgraces and is disgraced when it is wasted 
and misapplied ; confers honor and is honored when it 
is nobly utilized. Similarly, with us the " deserving " 
are those who are likely to make a good use of char- 
itable gifts bestowed on them; the undeserving those 
who are likely to waste the charitable gifts they re- 
ceive. 



q ■ INTRODUCTORY. 

But is not the World's Charitable List made up 
wholly of the deserving ? 

Yes, certainly; at least, from what the World says, 
we may legitimately infer that it is. The World does 
not believe in the haphazard bestowal of charity, and 
each recipient of her bounty, she explains, has under- 
gone a rigid investigation, and has claims which could 
not in good faith be ignored. Miss S. may seem to be 
rather unduly favored, but then her father engineered 
a most difficult financial operation in the reorganiza- 
tion of the X and Q railroad. The Duke of 

W. certainly draws largely on the charitable funds, 
but we must not forget that his remote ancestress 
made herself extremely pleasant to the ruling monarch 
of her day. Mr. Van A. at present hardly renders an 
equivalent in labor for the large yearly sum the World 
allows him, but when you come to look into it you find 
that whole blocks of houses uptown are built upon 
his ancestral acres. And so on through the whole list: 
every allowance from this charitable fund is an ac- 
knowledgment of services rendered, directly or indi- 
rectly. To ignore such claims, the World insists, 
would be a direct blow at the fundamental maxim 
upon which our social fabric is based, — that everyone 
has a right to the fruits of his exertions. 

And yet the World herself, like Mrs. B., occasion- 
ally receives a severe shock when contemplating the 
results of her bounty — a shock that makes her wonder 
if she has the proper idea as to who are the " deserv- 
ing." She has time and again discovered that many 
of her favorites have entirely ceased exerting them- 
selves; that they cannot be brought to undertake the 
most necessarv and honorable work, even when it 



Chap. i. CHARITY AND CHARITY. 1 

seeks them; that they have come to look upon their 
allowance from the charitable funds " just as if it be- 
longed to them " absolutely. She has even been heard 
in moments of extreme perturbation to remark under 
her breath that this was very much like being pau- 
perized; but her loyal trust in the principles on which 
her charitable list is based has as yet prevented any 
hasty and ill-advised attempt to recast it. 

And yet it cannot be denied that much of the most 
serious thinking she has done of recent years has been 
directed upon this problem. She is not dull-witted, 
albeit of a conservative temperament; and the spec- 
tacle of some of her largest benefactions producing 
untoward results has not been wasted upon her. Just 
what definite conclusions she has reached as the fruit 
of her thinking she has not yet seen fit to disclose; but 
it is becoming well understood that she is developing 
a determination to make her charitable list show better 
results, even if she should have to violate some time- 
honored traditions. 

But if her thinking have as yet borne little fruit in 
the shape of definite conclusions, it has been highly 
prolific of questions. " Does unearned wealth really 
help a person? — does it increase his ability and for- 
tify his determination to help himself? " — " Does his 
possession of it benefit the community at large? " — 
" Does it do most good and least harm when received 
in large or in small quantities? " — " Does it not often 
sap one's ability and determination to help himself, 
and so work deadly harm?" — "If large wealth do 
this, does it not produce real pauperism as truly as 
small doles? " — these are some of the questions she 
has lately been asking herself over and over again, 



8 INTRODUCTORY. 

with great earnestness, and with an apparent deter- 
mination to reach some definite conclusion. 

Of course the agitation of these questions is consid- 
ered very bad form by many of the beneficiaries of 
the World's Charitable List, (and by many would-be 
beneficiaries). These have attempted to stifle the 
World's thinking on this subject by several neat dem- 
onstrations that the whole commotion is merely an 
attempt of the drones to grasp the share of the work- 
ers. But these demonstrations have evidently failed 
to carry complete conviction; and we may therefore 
join our thinking powers to those of the World in at- 
tacking this problem, assured that it is still a very 
lively question, and that any good, solid thoughts we 
may be able to contribute to its consideration are not 
likely to be wasted. 

As a preliminary to the investigation of the World's 
Charitable List, let us devote a little time to formu- 
lating our ideas on the subjects we have taken up for 
consideration. As to the World's Charitable List let 
us inquire what relation it bears to the existing com- 
petitive system; and as to the general matter of char- 
ity let us inquire what elements tend to make char- 
itable giving really beneficial, and what elements tend 
to pauperizing. 



BOOK I. 
PRELIMINARY STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLES. 



CHAPTER II. 

REWARDS OF MERIT AND REWARDS BY FAVOR. 

We have seen that the World — the personified 
World of our little parable — considers that our social 
fabric is based upon the maxim that " Everyone has 
a right to the fruits of his own exertions." 

We also can heartily accept this principle as our 
foundation stone. Wealth that a man honestly and 
fairly earns is his to use according to his best lights. 
He may make mistakes in the use of it, — they do not 
concern us: Nature has placed it in his hands. We 
shall go far in our investigation of society before we 
begin to call Nature to account. 

Yet upon looking a little more closely into the 
matter we find the World pleading the sacredness of 
this principle as her excuse for maintaining her 
immense charitable list. We must, she says, secure 
to her favorites the fruits of others' exertions in order 
that everyone may enjoy the fruits of his own exer- 
tions. She makes the maxim read, Everyone has a 
right to the fruits of his own, and some a right to the 
fruits of others', exertions. 

This may be illogical, but it is true to life. We 
are constantly hearing our existing competitive sys- 
tem commended on the twin grounds (1) that it is a 
pure merit system, and (2) that it is a system of pure 
favoritism. On the first count it is admirable because 
it is so successful in evoking strenuous effort from the 



12 PRELIMINARY STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLES. Book 1. 

workers and in securing the survival of the fittest; and 
on the second, because it enables each victor in the 
competition to establish for his immediate family a 
little system of pure favoritism wherein effort is 
wholly unnecessary, and therein to set at naught the 
natural process which tends to secure the survival of 
the fittest. 

Thus the World's invitation to enter her competi- 
tion, if we look closely into its inner meaning, is some- 
what like this : " Come all ye strong men, and by your 
mighty endeavors help me to build high the walls of 
the great competitive Merit System. To each one of 
you who is conspicuously successful I will grant the 
privilege of setting off a great bomb under its loftiest 
towers." 

The popular confusion of ideas on this point is most 
marked. It may be worth our while to examine it 
a little more closely. 



The Self-Made Man is the hero of our modern com- 
petitive system. We are all perfectly familiar with 
him, both in actual life and in literature. Let us 
consider the ideas which rule his course. 

He is, in general, a strong, self-reliant, self-sufficient 
character. He started in life with little help from 
family or friends, with no capital, no advantages, no 
chance; but he triumphed over all adverse circum- 
stances, turned all obstacles into stepping-stones, grew 
in strength by the difficulties he conquered. His 
steadfast purpose to succeed and his resolute grappling 
with all hindrances begot a toughness of fibre and 
resourcefulness which rendered success certain. Of 



Chap. ii. REWARDS OF MERIT— REWARDS BY FAVOR. 13 

course he achieved a magnificent material success, but 
we have his word for it that he esteems this as noth- 
ing compared with the splendid character wrought out 
in the struggle. 

—Thus doth the Self-Made Man build high the 
walls of our competitive Merit System. 

Here is a really heroic figure, a noble ideal of life. 
To be sure we often find that the heroics have been a 
little exaggerated in the telling; that a little more 
kindly help has been enjoyed by the Self-Made Man 
than is set forth in his recital; that there are a few 
graces lacking in his ideal of a noble character. 
Nevertheless, we believe in him, as he belieA^es in him- 
self; we assent to his philosophy of the salutary results 
of discipline by struggle and adversity; we agree with 
him that the really fortunate man is he who is forced 
to depend solely upon his own exertions. 

Here, of course, is a lesson for all of us. Let us 
spurn all ideas of being helped on in our careers; let 
us depend solely upon our own efforts: we shall be 
the happier, the wiser, the nobler for it. 

But the Self-Made Man rears a family, and in due 
time he becomes anxious about their establishment, 
and their welfare in the future. He calls to mind the 
uncertainty of life, and desires so to fix things that 
his family will be provided for when he is gone. 

Of course he will be mindful of the lessons of his 
own youth and manhood! — of how the best help is 
self-help; the discipline of struggle and adversity a 
priceless benefit; the best provision for the future a 
determined will and a dauntless heart. He will, of 
course, leave his children the real and lasting benefit 
of being purely self-dependent ! 



14 PRELIMINARY STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLES. Book I. 

But, oh no! — that is quite a different matter. He 
soon sets us right on this point. " Do you think I in- 
tend to leave my family to the tender mercies of a 
cold world ? What is the use of my working all these 
years if I can't leave my children well provided for? 
They have a right to hold up their heads with the best 
of them. How ridiculous to say that they should 
learn to support themselves! They won't need to 
lift a finger to earn money ! " 

And we chime in with his declaration ; we wish, oh, 
so heartily, that we could leave our children as well 
fixed as his will be. We agree with him that there 
is no gainsaying the benefits of a good financial pro- 
vision for the future; that the really fortunate man 
is he who has had a parent able to ward off the cold 
world's buffeting. 

— And yet it is evident that here the Self-Made 
Man has exploded his bomb under the highest towers 
of the Merit System. 

Much weighty matter is written and spoken on the 
tacit assumption that our present frame of society is 
a pure merit system, — that whoso would alter a jot or 
tittle of our existing social arrangements is desecrating 
the Ark of the Covenant, — is trying to set aside the 
beneficent rule that " everyone has a right to the 
fruits of his own exertions." 

There is no doubt that the competitive system is a 
merit system. But as it actually operates it is a merit 
system burdened with heavy accretions of favoritism. 
These accretions constitute the upper and imposing 
portion of our Charitable List. They are usually re- 
ferred to airily as a mere incident of the development 



Chap. ii. REWARDS OF MERIT— REWARDS BY FAVOR. 15 

of the Merit System, — a small tail whicli such a lusty 
dog as the Merit System can easily wag. But there 
are some signs that this tail has grown so large as to be 
able to wag the dog, — that instead of our system 
being a merit system with a little incidental favor- 
itism, it is a system of favoritism artfully arranged to 
look like a merit system. A handicap race is doubt- 
less a competition, but a mile race in which handicaps 
of one mile are distributed is not so much a race as a 
study in handicapping. 

The theoretical statement of the Merit System as- 
sumes not only that it is the most efficient, but that 
it is the best for the individual worker. The Self- 
Made Man never fails to point out what an inestimable 
benefit accrued to him from his early struggles; — 
how much better it was for him to have to work for 
what he got, than to have rewards dropped into his 
waiting hands. 

The practical working of the upper Charitable List, 
on the other hand, assumes that it is an excellent thing 
for a man to get his rewards without the disagreeable 
necessity of exerting himself. We lack adequate 
acquaintance with its theory, if such exist, but infer 
that it consists largely of a shrug of the shoulders. 

But, theory or no theory, the building up and cher- 
ishing of the Charitable List as practised are directly 
hostile to the Merit System. They are all the more so 
from being the practice of its zealous lip-servants. An 
attack upon the system which permits the present con- 
stitution of the Charitable List, therefore, is not an 
attack upon the real Merit System, but upon its 
enemies. 

The World, however, although much perplexed over 



16 PRELIMINARY STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLES. Book 1. 

the subject, is afraid nothing can be done to separate 
the Charitable List from the Merit System. " Why," 
she exclaims, " you know my whole progress in build- 
ing up the Merit System depends on my securing the 
cooperation of these great Self-Made Men, and they 
absolutely wouldn't work a stroke if I didn't offer 
them these bombs. Of course, the bombs do some 
damage, but look what a ceaseless activity in con- 
structive work I secure by using the bombs as bribes." 

This, of course, may be true. We are new at the 
business of building a Merit System, and we may find 
things are as the World says. Still, we recall to mind 
the fact that the World usually rewards her self-made 
men rather handsomely over and above the bombs, 
and we are moved to wonder if these rewards would 
not incite them to exertion even were the bomb offer 
withdrawn. 

But at any rate we can keep clearly in mind the 
fact that the huge benefactions of the Charitable List 
are not a part of the Merit System, but an excrescence 
upon it, a disease attacking it. If we can free the 
Merit System from this diseased excrescence it will be 
infinitely the stronger for the relief. 

In attacking the accretions of favoritism which have 
grown into a great mass upon the shoulders of the 
Merit System we may wish we could restore our social 
system to the rugged grandeur of the Self-Made 
Man's ideal, — that everyone should depend solely 
upon his own exertions. But sober second thought 
might beget a doubt as to the wisdom of this, even 
were it practicable. 

For this is rather too severe an ideal to dwell gently 



Chap. ii. REWARDS OF MERIT— REWARDS BY FAVOR, 17 

in the popular heart. Even the Self-Made Man has 
to indulge in the arts of make-up a little to fill this 
tremendous role. When he has doffed his theatrical 
armor, and washed the paint from his face, he no 
doubt feels satisfied not to attempt to force his chil- 
dren to play a part so grand. And the practical result 
in the end is very likely to be, as we have seen, that 
he comes to regard his sterner philosophy as good, but 
not useful, and is content to leave his children to 
support the tremendous responsibilities of coupon - 
clippers. 

And his practical conclusion is right in one respect, 
— his full heroic doctrine is too severe for ordinary 
humanity. Most people do not thrive on continuous 
trial, hardship, misfortune; are not able to begin the 
fight of life at the cradle, and draw the breath of 
battle all their lives; do not feel their spirits rise for 
the conflict in proportion to the severity of the fight- 
ing. Most people need to have their strength care- 
fully conserved and nourished in order that they may 
creditably play even a little part in life. They need 
sympathy, help over hard places, support and approba- 
tion at need; and acquit themselves far better in the 
fight if these have been provided. That there are 
people who have the tough fibre and strenuous cour- 
age of our Self -Made Man we cannot doubt; but let 
us not frame our philosophy for a few heroes — or 
" freaks." 

The assistance and support which are so greatly 
needed by ordinary humanity as a preparation for con- 
flict and effort it is the function of the World's 
charitable funds to supply. To direct these funds to 
this end would of course necessitate some change in 



18 PRELIMINARY STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLES. Book I. 

existing arrangements, but it would not by any means 
violate tlie fundamental maxim of our social organi- 
zation. It would not strike down the Merit System, 
but give it greater strength, and it would make the 
ultimate attainment under its operation higher and 
more common. On the contrary, to use these 
charitable funds to make strenuous effort seem un- 
necessary and contemptible is a direct blow at the 
Merit System. 

Our investigation of the World's Charitable List 
shall be conducted, if we are able, entirely in the in- 
terest of the true Merit System. We shall not attempt 
to curtail, but on the contrary to extend, the applica- 
tion of the maxim, " To every man the fruits of his 
own exertions." 



CHAPTER III. 

HELPS TO WORK AND HELPS TO IDLENESS. 

Burke hesitated to draw an indictment against a 
whole nation. We may well feel a similar hesitation 
in drawing an indictment against our Charitable List. 

For by our definition we made the World's 
Charitable List include all who receive for their own 
benefit the fruit of others' labor; and any man who 
claims that he does not now and never did this is 
either a self-made man or a " freak " — probably 
both. Every gift from a parent to a child is a bene- 
faction upon the World's Charitable List. Thus it 
is evident that every human soul has been at one time 
or another enrolled as a beneficiary of the World's 
charity. Even a self-made man was once a baby. 

But in truth we have no desire to draw an indict- 
ment against the List as a whole. We have pointed 
out a highly beneficial use to which a large part of 
the World's charitable funds is devoted ; and our pur- 
pose is not wholesale condemnation but investiga- 
tion, — to discover, if we can, and point out which are 
the helpful, which the harmful, applications of the 
World's charity. 

Nor do we wish to attack all large beneficiaries of 
the Charitable List. Some of our remarks may sound 
as if we did; but while we may have glanced at these 
as furnishing typical examples of the harm the World's 
charity sometimes does, we know that such ready- 

19 



20 PRELIMINARY STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLES. Book I. 

made division lines only confuse us. The evil is not 
solely in the largeness nor the virtue in the sraallness 
of the World's benefactions. Some large fortunes 
which she has bestowed have been the very best in- 
vestments the poor old perplexed World has ever 
made. 

The point is one of difficulty, and we may cast upon 
it whatever illumination we can get from Mrs. B.'s 
wide experience. 

" When I was a little green in charitable work," 
said Mrs. B., " I had a disagreement with my friend, 
Mrs. MacF., as to a man I wished to help. He stood 
investigation better than any man on my list. He 
was of a good American family, their home was always 
neat and clean, he was perfectly sober, and in fact 
flawless in all points of personal character. He was 
also a hard-working man ; but had had misfortune, and 
was getting a little behindhand when he came to my 
notice. He and his family were people of refinement, 
and his bearing was that of a gentleman. I felt that 
I could never forgive myself if I failed to meet his 
needs generously, and I made him an allowance which 
put his income up to its previous level, and a little 
over, to enable him to make up for the time he was 
out of work. 

"Mrs. MacF. didn't like him, though she couldn't 
give the least reason for it except to mutter i inverte- 
brate ' when I enumerated his good points. She 
wanted me to take up instead with a dirty and repul- 
sive Italian whom she seemed to admire, though when 
we came to investigate him the only thing we could 
find out about him was that he and his family had 



Chap. in. HELPS TO WORK AND HELPS TO IDLENESS. 21 

always lived in the gutter. However, she was so 
insistent that I finally made him a small allowance, 
though I told her that to ask me to drop Warner in 
his favor was an insult, so I kept Warner on too. 
Well, after three or four payments her Italian was 
lost sight of, and I supposed he had probably gone to 
prison for theft, or something. But some time after 
that Warner came to me for a little extra help to get 
him out of a tight place, and on going to look the 
matter up I found the little grocery where he got his 
supplies was threatening to sue him — and Warner has 
a very nice outfit of furniture and household goods; 
he might not have been able to escape under the ex- 
emption laws. Well, I went to see the grocer to get 
him to be easy with Warner, and, — would you believe 
it! — the grocer was this dirty Fontanelli, who had 
saved up the money I had allowed him, and used it 
to start huckstering from a cart, and had branched 
out into a store inside of a year. And he was as nasty 
and disagreeable about Warner's little account as if 
he had been a Shylock all his days. I had to pay 
Warner's account to save his furniture, but I gave 
orders never to put another Italian name on my 
charitable list ; so next time Mrs. MacF. wants to help 
trash of that sort she'll have to tap somebody else." 

The moral of this little incident may be variously 
drawn according to the taste and fancy of the moral- 
ist, but the palpable moral for us, we think, is this: — 
It is not past, but future, record that properly counts 
in making up a charitable list. 

This may seem a hard saying to those not able to 
read the future. It is a hard saying to all; the fact 



22 PRELIMINARY STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLES. Book I. 

behind it is a hard, unwelcome fact — at least to many 
of us. 

The course which sympathy takes in making up a 
charitable list is usually founded upon past records, 
and upon records of respectability, not of efficiency. 
We cannot bear to see the refined and delicately- 
nurtured brought by reverses to taste the merciless 
realities of life without wishing to spare their feel- 
ings. It is an instinct with generous natures to hasten 
to the relief of people of the stamp of the Warners. 
A large amount of sympathetic help is directed to sav- 
ing a little of the pride of fallen aristocrats; to miti- 
gating the shock of transference from the realm of 
favoritism to the Merit System. 

Yet whatever may be the arguments of decency in 
favor of such charity, it is only too likely to prove a 
help to idleness, to sap the recipients' ability and deter- 
mination to help themselves, to inject lotus-juice into 
the blood that needs iron, to poison in the listener's 
mind the good advice of the Self-Made Man. It is 
charity sorrowfully regarding the past; Ave do not need 
to be prophets to see that in most cases the future 
records will not sustain it. 

On the other hand it grates upon our nerves to help 
the Fontanellis, — the grasping creatures whose 
abnormally-developed acquisitiveness breeds within us 
an instinctive feeling of repulsion. And yet we can 
be almost certain that their future record will sus- 
tain us; that we are helping them to work and to the 
ability to help themselves; that in years to come the 
Self-Made Man will use their cases to point his morals 
for the instruction of youth, and to glorify our com- 
petitive Merit System. 



Chap. in. HELPS TO WORK AND HELPS TO IDLENESS. 23 

Fortunately the case does not usually present itself 
in quite the sharp contrast of our illustration. 
Decency does not disqualify for strenuous exertion; 
people of refinement and culture are not always in- 
vertebrates; to help a grasping " gutter-snipe " is not 
necessarily the best investment of charitable funds. 
But consideration of these contrasted cases will, we 
think, show the line on which judgment must be given 
in each case. We must judge by the future record, 
so far as we can foresee it; we must help people to get 
to work, not help them to indulge pride in idleness; 
we must help to line up the workers for the test of the 
Merit System, not help them to escape its rude but 
invigorating touch. 

Charity may wisely undertake to supply seed-grain 
and fertilizers, plows and reaping machines; she can- 
not, without pauperizing, supply the harvest. 



CHAPTER IA r . 

SEED-GRAIN AND BEEAD. 

We have argued in our last chapter that to dispense 
charity wisely one must have the modest gift of fore- 
seeing the future record of those he wishes to help. 
After arriving at this conclusion a few remarks on 
how to read the future are manifestly called for. 

We propose, however, to dismiss a large part of this 
subject at the outset. So far as the forecasting of the 
future in these charitable problems rests upon judg- 
ment of individual character, we have nothing helpful 
to say. To judge character accurately is a task of 
immense difficulty, requiring rare and apparently in- 
communicable gifts of mind and heart, and ripe 
experience. There are, however, people who have 
these marvelous gifts most marvelously developed. 
We cannot by taking thought give any useful rules for 
adding one to their number; but it is evident that 
such, so far as they can be procured, should be the 
almoners of the World's Charitable List in cases 
where such judgment is demanded. 

But even if we had a corps of unerring discerners 
of character constantly on the watch for cases just 
ripe for charitable assistance, we might be balked by 
lack of material. Our search for perfect applicants 
for help might be as arduous as Diogenes' search for 
an honest man. If we could furnish the money and 
the recipients be depended on to do the rest, our task 
would be greatly simplified. But as a matter of fact, 



Chap. iv. SEED-GRAIN AND BREAD. 25 

people who lack money usually also lack some im- 
portant qualities of character. If the future record 
of a man be allowed to rest solely upon his own char- 
acter, and money be the only gift we can bestow, 
giving will probably be found to be as dangerous as 
withholding. 

But the future record of the recipient of charity 
need not, in fact must not, rest solely upon his own 
character. Giving is a process of character-forming, 
and thus moulds the future for good or evil. People 
who need help cannot safely be trusted with full dis- 
cretion in the use of it. An influence of steady power 
and far-seeing wisdom is needed here; — the animus 
which the giver can communicate with his gift. Un- 
der our present system of voluntary charity, on him 
must rest the burden of overseeing the application of 
charitable gifts. 

The giver is, or may be if he wish, the commanding 
officer of his squad of charitable pensioners. He 
can, of course, be a purely titular officer, and often is ; 
in which case his squad wanders aimlessly. On the 
other hand, he can, if he wish, establish a standard 
of judgment to be applied to the use made of his 
charitable gifts; and he can give or withhold in the 
future as his standard is or is not reached. He can 
see that his help is used in ways which lead toward 
self-help, instead of being squandered in self-indul- 
gence; — that grain is set aside for seed-wheat instead 
of being used for riotous living. If he consistently 
do these things and make known his reasons for so 
doing, it is certain that his beneficiaries will at least 
attempt to reach his standard ; and this alone is suffi- 
cient to have a very powerful formative influence on 



26 PRELIMINARY STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLES. Bo k I. 

the results of his charity and the future of the people 
he attempts to help. On the other hand, if he con- 
sistently wash his hands of the results as soon as he 
has given the money, he is pretty certain to breed 
extensive pauperism. 

Our main rule, then, for the reading of the 
future, is simply this: Shape the future. So far as 
one can judge accurately of the future record of a 
certain man under certain circumstances, he is of 
course bound to use his ability, and to give or with- 
hold according to the probable good or evil results. 
But his own influence on the recipient of his gift 
should never be colorless or undecided; — that this 
is so often the case is certainly a large part of our 
trouble with charity. After one has done his best 
in the direction of judging character he will have to 
face much uncertainty as to the outcome; and the 
best provision he can make against this uncertainty 
is to see that his gifts are accepted and understood as 
being not merely relief, but as having a definite aim 
and purpose to help toward self-help. 

This is truly laying a heavy burden of responsibil- 
ity upon the individual giver, and we are well aware 
that at present he is a bruised reed. Frankly, no such 
care as we demand of him is to be reasonably ex- 
pected, — at least until his further growth in grace. 
ISTor Avould it be exactly easy to suggest a worthier 
substitute for him. But waiving for the present the 
question of the administration of charity, it is evident 
that its invariable aim should be to build for the 
future. It should insist that its gifts be used as seed- 
grain, and never applied to the mere barren relief of 
present distress. 



Chap. iv. SEED-GRAIN AND BREAD. 27 

This course, if generally adopted, would be a most 
potent influence in determining the fruits of charity. 
The World's List and Mrs. B.'s list suffer inexpress- 
ibly in effectiveness because of their lack of some such 
definite guiding principle. 



It is our belief that the Charity of Condescension 
as at present administered contains almost no recogni- 
tion of the cardinal principle which marks non- 
pauperizing charity. It vaguely expects its bene- 
ficiaries to work toward self-help, and is profuse in 
lamentations when they fail to do so, but it usually 
does not even consider the questions of ways and 
means involved, and its dole is rarely so bestowed as 
to suggest the idea of working for the future. It is 
" relief " or an " allowance " when it should be 
" assistance " or an " advance " or a " loan." It is 
the gift of wheat when a man's harvest is short; how 
shall he know, unless the giver impress it upon him, 
that it is to be used solely for seed-wheat, and none of 
it for bread? 

The usual beginning of a history from Mrs. B.'s 
charitable list is a case of unusual distress. An allow- 
ance is made which seems sufficient to relieve the keen 
edge of suffering; — and it is very often cut down 
below this on the general idea that small gifts are not 
so likely to pauperize as large ones. After continu- 
ing the dole for a while, it is discovered that the needs 
are not diminishing, or perhaps are increasing, in 
urgency. The conclusion is drawn that this par- 
ticular case is developing into a permanent one; that 
the help has produced no real benefit; that the re- 



28 PKELIMINARY STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLES. Book I. 

cipient is becoming pauperized, and should be put on 
the black-list. 

Yet Mrs. B. has here plainly failed to comprehend 
the plainest principles of really helpful charity. She 
has found a man whose harvest was so short that it 
meant starvation. She has given him a little grain, — 
enough to change his condition from one of actual 
starvation to one of great scarcity merely. He strug- 
gles along as best he may on his scanty food-supply, 
and in due season cometh Mrs. B., and lifteth her 
hands in holy horror to discover that her protege has 
planted no crop for the coming year. Verily, she 
saith, the improvidence of the poor is his ruin! 

And yet in a case like this Mrs. B. has certainly 
no reason to complain. She has simply given enough 
to relieve the man from starvation; she has carefully 
limited her bounty that he might not have anything 
over the amount necessary to accomplish this. If he 
escape starvation Mrs. B. has witnessed all the results 
from her charity that she was entitled to expect. She 
has supplied him with no means to do more. The 
objective point of her measures is merely the relief of 
distress, not the provision of help to self-help. If, by 
reason of having escaped starvation, he be encouraged 
to make some mighty effort and lift himself to in- 
dependence, or if he have other help, or if fortune 
again smile on him, — all well and good; but, — it is 
none of Mrs. B.'s doing. Her dissatisfaction is in the 
nature of a complaint that her protege did not starve 
himself to death to save seed-wheat for the future 
crop. 

The Charity of Condescension has, we think, been 
entirely too much in the habit of being satisfied in its 



Chap. iv. SEED-GRAIN AND BREAD. 29 

benefactions with just cheating starvation of its vic- 
tims, and expecting the gods to clap their shoulders 
to the wheels and do the really useful, uplifting work. 
It has, however, contributed one great influence 
toward securing good results from its gifts, and that 
is, simply expecting them. It never fails to proclaim 
that the seed-wheat must be saved, even when it means 
starvation to save it. It would be inspiring were it 
not so pathetic to note how many accept its challenge 
to do the impossible, and do starve themselves to save 
seed-wheat for their future crop — or that of their 
children. 

But our Charity of Condescension should cease to 
depend so much on a philosophy for the exceptional. 
If only heroes and self-made men can meet her terms, 
the great mass of her beneficiaries must go unbene- 
fited, and perhaps debased. Ordinary men cannot be 
expected to save largely for the future crop unless 
they have seed-wheat in addition to their daily bread. 
Ordinary men cannot seriously and strenuously take 
up the task of preparing themselves for more fruitful 
effort unless they have some dependable means to 
count on, over and above the mere sustenance of life. 
This does not mean that we should cease to save men 
from starvation, but that we should insist on saving 
them to some good purpose; and that this second 
salvation, — which is the real salvation so far as the 
community is concerned, — is likely to require addi- 
tional funds. 

We do not at present propose to deal with the ques- 
tion of providing these additional funds. The point 
upon which we are now laying all our emphasis is that 
charitable giving should invariably proceed from a 



30 PRELIMINARY STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLES. Book I. 

clearly-understood and clearly-expressed purpose to 
help only toward self-help. It is evident that the 
universal or general adoption of this definite purpose 
by charitable givers, or the adoption of some general 
system which would tend toward the same end, would 
in itself have a strong tendency to make charity 
effective as a means toward its chosen end. But 
obviously in many cases the adding of this implication 
to charitable gifts means an added expense. On the 
other hand, the principle advocated would condemn 
and seek to discontinue a vast mass of so-called charity 
which is really more in the nature of blackmail, — the 
doles extorted by tramps and by street and office beg- 
gars and " spectacular " cases from fear, good-nature, 
carelessness, sentimentality, ignorance, haste and 
preoccupation. 

Whether the money saved by discontinuing these 
purely vicious pseudo-charities would or would not be 
equal to the extra amount which a rational system 
would demand elsewhere, we shall not attempt to 
decide. But the principle we have advocated, if it 
be valid, applies regardless of the magnitude of the 
expenditure involved. Whether our charitable funds 
be large or small, it is evident that the best results can 
only be expected when they shall be distributed 
according to an intelligent and coherent system. 

Thus our passing consideration of the conditions 
which tend to make charitable giving really beneficial 
has led to some luminous conclusions. It has shown 
us that much giving is wasted because prompted by 
short-sighted sympathy, and much more made inef- 
fective by equally short-sighted penuriousness. We 



Chap. iv. SEED-GRAIN AND BREAD. 31 

have learned that respectability is not always a valid 
title to charitable gifts; that personal feelings are not 
to be implicitly trusted in the choice of persons to be 
helped. We have also seen that haphazard generosity 
is not merely futile but harmful; that a regular sys- 
tem, and wise discretion in its application, are indis- 
pensable prerequisites of accomplishing serious ad- 
vance in lifting charity-receivers toward self-depend- 
ence. 

But upon the question of providing the needed 
wisdom to apply our system, our researches have as 
yet thrown little light. We have reached no remedy 
for unwise giving except to advise the charitable to 
be wise; and this has before been tried with small 
effect. There is in the world, however, much wise as 
well as much unwise charity. Let us examine broadly 
its various methods and incidents, and the consequent 
results, and see if we can thus extract any help toward 
the solution of our problem. 



BOOK II. 

THE WORLD'S CHARITABLE LIST. 



CHAPTEE V. 

THE MINOR CHARITIES OF CONDESCENSION. PAUPERIZING 

BY WITHHOLDING. 

In investigating the World's Charitable List we 
shall divide her cases by relative magnitude into the 
Minor, the Medium and the Major Charities; and we 
naturally begin with the Minor Charities, or those 
small in individual amount. No exact bounds can 
well be given for these classes; they merge insensibly 
into one another. The position occupied by each is 
indicated with sufficient accuracy by the names we 
have given them. We can of course only deal with 
the general characteristics of each class as a whole. 
To carry our investigation into their divisions and 
subdivisions would unduly extend our inquiry, and 
is unnecessary for the accomplishment of our present 
purpose. 

Almost all the cases of the Charities of Conde- 
scension fall within the Minor Charities. They con- 
stitute a most important part of these, and as they are 
to everybody the most familiar part of the World's 
Charity, we shall turn our attention first to them. 

But why investigate here? If there be one phase 
of our social system where no further investigation is 
needed, it might be plausibly maintained that the 
Charities of Condescension constitute that one. 
Surely when we approach this region we may well 
stay our hand, and feast on the fruits of previous in- 
vestigations ! 

35 



36 THE WORLD'S CHARITABLE LIST. Book II. 

There have certainly been plenty of investigations, 
— but not from our precise standpoint. We do not 
propose to go digging for a mass of new facts, but to 
take a survey which will reveal the significance of the 
facts already generally familiar. In truth, we have 
small reason to complain of the scarcity of the latter. 
Reports and reports and reports there have been in 
great profusion: — reports of Parliamentary commis- 
sions, of Congressional committees, poor-law boards, 
legislative committees, privately - appointed com- 
mittees, self-appointed committees: — should we stop 
to digest the fruits of all previous investigations be- 
fore proceeding with our own survey, we should never 
investigate more. And still the reports pour forth, 
and still they bear to an expectant people much in- 
formation and good advice for the right ordering of 
their charitable gifts; and the essence and burden and 
refrain of most of them is always and ever the im- 
pressive message, " Beware ! beware ! ! beware ! ! ! — 
beware of pauperizing by your charitable gifts! " 

In all of this of course we can heartily join. But 
the mission of the message does not end here. The 
well-to-do hear it, and they marvel at and approve it; 
they repeat it for their own edification and pass it on 
to their friends, and they coin it into a familiar saying 
for their future guidance. And this we find to be 
the burden of their familiar saying, — " Beware of 
giving much to charity; for large charitable gifts will 
surely pauperize." And right zealously, in season 
and out of season, do they bear testimony to this cher- 
ished truth. 

It may seem strange that in all these years of warn- 
ing the pernicious habit of giving to a pauperizing 



Chap. v. MINOR CHARITIES OF CONDESCENSION. 37 

extent has never been brought under control. Most 
people are not naturally averse to making their out- 
lay smaller. Some in particular of those who might 
be large charitable givers may be said to show a 
marked avidity for the advice to beware of giving. 
Yet we can hardly consider this impressively reiter- 
ated advice as a fraudulent cry of " Wolf! " and we 
are forced to believe that the message is needed, — 
that, however a few of those able to give may hang 
back, the well-to-do people of our time as a class have 
grown so generous, and their rapidly-increasing wealth 
has so enlarged their power to give, that their bene- 
factions have swelled to an embarrassing amount; and 
that the result is seen in an uncontrollable and swiftly- 
rising tide of pauperism. 

A glance at the amount of charity disbursed in our 
large cities will make this seem entirely probable. A 
conservative writer in a reputable journal has recently 
stated that charitable funds aggregating not less than 
ten million dollars are annually distributed in New 
York city alone — (that is, the present borough of 
Manhattan). This immense sum, — sufficient to 
defray the expense of one hundred first-class social 
functions in the smart set ! — would allow the distribu- 
tion of over five dollars to each of the city's in- 
habitants! As quite a number of these are self- 
supporting, the concentration of pauperizing virus 
upon the remainder may be faintly imagined ! 

The fact that a vast mass of pauperism follows the 
distribution of these enormous funds, is too patent to 
need proof. Even those of us who have done no pro- 
fessional " slumming " are quite sufficiently con- 
versant with the facts. At every turn we meet hordes 



38 THE WORLD'S CHARITABLE LIST. Book II. 

of the defeated in life's battle, who, having been 
forced to have recourse in greater or less degree to 
charitable help, have plainly started on the downward 
path. Only too frequently they have gone far down 
its steep declivity, or — saddest of all — have been sub- 
merged in the slough of despond in which it termin- 
ates. Yes, plainly the warning is most urgently 
needed! 

And yet — we still have a lingering doubt on this 
point. Is even so large a charitable dole as ten dollars 
per year absolutely deadly? Have we not known 
people who have received as much as twenty-five or 
fifty dollars, and yet survived to be self-supporting 
and elicit the praises of the Self-Made Man? Is there 
no antidote to this subtile poison? Must we entirely 
stop the giving out of charitable funds, thus starving 
these poor unfortunates, in order to subdue the terrible 
contagious disease which has acquired such a hold on 
them ? 

We have seen that on the World's Charitable List 
even larger sums than these are not unknown. One 
thousand, five thousand, ten thousand dollars a year 
have been given in some cases, and not infrequently 
the results seem to be excellent, — some unknown in- 
fluence evidently counteracting the virus. In fact, 
the World has experimented with charitable dona- 
tions of millions per year, and has never publicly 
charged the recipients with being pauperized. But — 
she may be somewhat given to favoritism, and — she 
may be thinking. 

At any rate let us see if we can learn from her ex- 
perience anything of value on this point. 



Chap. v. MINOR CHARITIES OF CONDESCENSION. 39 

As the readers who have followed us thus far will 
easily realize, we do not credit the World with a sur- 
plus of intelligence in regard to her Charitable List. 
But she has a cool " nerve " which is not without its 
value. She can approach the idea of giving a person 
as much as twenty-five dollars a year without that 
horrible palpitation of the heart which seizes so many 
of Mrs. B.'s co-workers at thought of these figures. 
Like the ignorant nurse who in old times gave a fever- 
patient a full breath of fresh air, never knowing what 
a deadly act it was, the World nonchalantly gives her 
patients charitable doses strong enough, by all the 
accepted facts of charitable lore, to kill a dozen times, 
— and the patients thrive on the poison. Science owes 
not a little to experiments which no competently- 
informed person would have dared to make. 

The public has grown entirely familiar with the 
World's performances in this direction, and seems to 
have reached the conclusion that, so far as her list goes, 
excessive gifts never pauperize, — the trouble is with 
the deficient ones. Of course it has to be convenient- 
ly blind to some troublesome facts to believe this. 
But it is still waiting for some enfant terrible to try 
the same experiment with the lists of Mrs. B. and her 
co-workers. If some reckless person should dare to 
give charitable doses of double or quadruple strength 
in the realm of the Charities of Condescension, the 
public would feel its blood freeze with horror while it 
looked on and awaited the catastrophe. 

But for ourselves, reasoning from the substantial 
identity of the principles involved in both cases, we 
are by no means persuaded that the expected catas- 
trophe would be inevitable. We may even confess 



40 THE WORLD'S CHARITABLE LIST. Book II. 

that we should dearly love to be the enfant terrible 
to try the experiment, — first, however, instituting 
certain necessary precautions. It is not lack of 
" nerve " that stays our hand, but lack of command 
of the necessary charitable funds. 

But as there seems to be for the present very little 
likelihood of our being able to try our foolhardy ex- 
periment, let us reason to the best of our ability from 
the facts as we know them, and try to determine the 
extent to which the charitable donations of Mrs. B. 
and her co-workers harm because of their excess, and, 
on the other hand, the extent to which we must call in 
some other explanation to account for their pauper- 
izing effect. 

At the very outset, of course, we are confronted by 
the case of Mrs. B.'s protege, who allowed his income 
from charity to supersede all necessity for exerting 
himself. This is evidently a case of pauperizing pure 
and simple, created by an excess of charitable giving. 
The public's worst expectations would be speedily 
realized were his dose multiplied. 

But here we would pause to ask our interlocutors, 
How many similar cases can you count from personal 
knowledge ? For ourselves, we aver that, although we 
have had experience, at first- -and second-hand, with 
a considerable number of charitable cases, we have 
never met enough instances of this kind to cause any 
uneasiness. We believe that this man is, in fact, a 
bogey; that the few genuine cases like his have been 
talked of so excessively that they have grown into a 
spectre army. Let nobody be seriously disturbed over 
him until his census is taken. 



Chap. v. MINOR CHARITIES OF CONDESCENSION. 41 

Then a second class of cases where pauperizing is 
evidently chargeable to too much giving is what we 
have called the pseudo-charities, — the cases of bare- 
faced imposition. All the help given to such cases 
tends directly to pauperizing, — to destroying the dis- 
position to self-help and fostering the disposition to 
live by fraud. To multiply the funds so spent would 
be indeed forcing a catastrophe : per contra, very few 
things would so clear up the difficulties of the chari- 
table question as their entire abolition. The only 
good thing to be said about the effect of such giving 
is that it cultivates in successful impostors a mental 
alertness very similar to that needed for the conduct 
of some classes of business. But when such businesses 
are properly rated the compliment very largely dis- 
appears from this admission. 

But passing by these two classes, which offer few 
difficulties in theory, however troublesome they may 
be in practice, let us see what we can learn of the rea- 
sons that produce so much pauperism in the heart of 
the charitable field where Mrs. B. and her like labor. 

The wage-workers, and money-earners in general, of 
the lower grades, whose seasons of comparative pros- 
perity are so near the edge of actual want, constitute 
the principal material of these charitable lists. They 
are not in general lazy, — often quite the contrary; 
and they are not shiftless as a class, though their 
entire innocence of the niceties of life often serves as 
the foundation in fact for the belief that they are. 
The charity that is dispensed to them usually comes 
from the hands of workers who have had considerable 
experience, and who, whatever their faults, are at any 
rate deeply versed in the danger of pauperizing. Yet 



42 THE WORLD'S CHARITABLE LIST. Book "• 

here it is, so far as we can discover, that pauperism 
has its most relentless hold, and that the attempts at 
relief seem most inadequate and ineffective. 

A large part of the explanation lies in the entire 
lack of any " margin of safety " among these ele- 
ments of the population. Their income is exhausted 
to the last cent in procuring the barest necessities of 
life, and any unforeseen call for reserve funds, — a 
serious illness or death, a shutdown of the factory, a 
change in the conditions of their work or the intro- 
duction of new machinery, — of necessity throws them 
into the ranks of charity-receivers. But the help 
they purchase by taking upon themselves the stigma 
of charity is small, and usually restricted with relig- 
ious care to preventing actual suffering, if it does so 
much as this. Once they are brought to this condi- 
tion, escape by the ordinary means at their command 
is impossible. They are held by the iron grip of 
necessity as receivers of charitable doles whose 
jealously-guarded insufficiency prevents their making 
any recuperative effort. Is it any wonder that their 
outlook in life comes to be one of dull and fatalistic 
despair, or that they cease to consider their own efforts 
as having any power to shape the future? 

Despair and fatalism are the signs of pauperizing 
by withholding, as satiety, self-satisfaction and fan- 
tastically - directed energy reveal the pauperism 
wrought by excessive giving. When a man ceases to 
hope he becomes a dead weight on society. Charity 
that does not instil hope has no regenerating power; 
and when it gives daily bread yet insists on provid- 
ing nothing beyond, it is substantially pauperizing by 
withholding. 



Chap. v. MINOR CHARITIES OF CONDESCENSION. 43 

We know perfectly well that this cursory statement 
of the case is far from covering the ground satisfac- 
torily. Mere increase of money dole is not what is 
wanted, to be sure; yet we are by no means certain 
that this would not of itself be an improvement, 
though a comparatively slight one. An increase all 
along the line of those charitable gifts which are at 
present made under reasonably competent and care- 
ful oversight would, in all probability, be greatly 
beneficial, and have comparatively little vicious in- 
fluence: — but on this point we speak with diffidence. 
But what is of course really needed is an unfailing 
agency to direct funds only to purposes of self-help. 
The only agency we can call on for this purpose, — at 
any rate at this stage of our inquiry, — is an accession 
of intelligent and interested influence to accompany 
and direct an increase of funds, and to impress its 
gospel of help to self-help upon every recipient of 
charitable funds. 

This is particularly true of all charity which essays 
to deal with that terrible plague-spot of our social 
organism, — the evil of intemperance. While urging 
increased, not diminished, charity as the real need 
of the very poor, we cannot with candor ignore the 
complications arising from the liquor question. Our 
appeals for more funds might fall on deaf ears if we 
addressed them to some experienced dispensers of 
charity. These persons are only too likely to have a 
significant parenthesis in their minds to insert in our 
talk about starvation. They know that there is starva- 
tion in the home while yet the husband and father 
has seemingly unfailing funds for the purchase of 
ardent poison. They know that in such cases in- 



44 THE WORLD'S CHARITABLE LIST. Book n. 

creased giving would mean increased drunkenness, 
while the only seed-grain concerned would be the 
innocent rye perverted to feed the deadly still. 

We can only sorrowfully admit the truth of all this. 
What we have said must be taken subject to the ex- 
ceptions which exist, in this case as well as in many 
others we have not had time to specify. We are not 
able to solve the drink problem; its concern with the 
especial field of our present investigation we shall 
endeavor to treat more in detail in a subsequent 
chapter. But it is as true of these as of most other 
cases of the Minor Charities that what is needed is not 
less, but more, funds, admitting always that these 
added funds would here be w r orse than useless were 
they not accompanied with an unwearying applica- 
tion of that pure gold of charity, the charity of the 
New Testament : — the charity that suifereth long and 
is kind; that is not puffed up nor easily provoked; that 
believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all 
things. 

This brings us again face to face with the question 
of ways and means, — How are we to provide the enor- 
mous increase of funds necessary? And again we beg 
leave to answer that we are not just at this moment 
considering the ways and means question, which we 
shall take up in due course of time, but trying to show 
that the real cause of much of the most persistent and 
apparently hopeless pauperism is, not excessive, but 
insufficient, giving. 

This is not a very recondite truth. It should not 
be necessary to insist upon it, and it would not be, 
except for the existence of that very self-satisfying 



Chap. v. MINOR CHARITIES OF CONDESCENSION. 45 

opinion which we have found prevalent among a cer- 
tain class, — important from their financial standing, 
— to the effect that charitable help always pauperizes 
the poor, and that an excess of it is at the bottom of 
most of their troubles. This is a very free and fan- 
tastic deduction from scattered facts and half-truths, 
and it holds its ground because its holders never take 
the trouble to test its accuracy; while on the other 
hand it is acceptable to them because it throws the 
mantle of a noble-sounding reason over an attitude that 
partakes of uncharitableness and selfishness. 

This attitude of cynical disbelief in the possibility 
of doing good by giving, — (which may be disinter- 
ested, but more likely has an eye open to self-interest), 
— is, we think, one of the main obstacles of our time 
to the adoption of wise charitable methods. If we 
could inspire people of this class to seriously consider 
themselves for awhile as recipients of charity, — as 
they are, — and to measure themselves with the same 
measure wherewith they mete out justice to the poor, 
we should be taking a long step forward toward hap- 
pier days for this burdened World. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE MINOR CHARITIES OF EQUALITY. PREPARATION FOR 

PAUPERIZING. 

The idea of Independence is a national fetich with 
the American people. Small wonder then that our 
American hero, the Self-Made Man, has given it a 
development peculiarly his own. 

" I believe in a young man striking out for himself 
and being independent," he says, " and not looking to 
his father to help him along. Why, from the time I 
went to be assistant in the grocery store at Podunk, 
just turning thirteen years old, I never had a cent of 
help from the home folks. I tell you, the sooner a 
young fellow makes himself independent the more 
likely he is to make his mark in the world." 

This trenchant remark disposes of the theory, — put 
forward by a philosopher of some repute for book- 
learning, but without any claim to the magnificent 
position of the Self -Made Man in the business world, 
— that the long period of adolescence of the human 
race plays an important part in explaining the pro- 
gressive tendency of man and his supremacy over the 
brute creation. In the light of the Self-Made Man's 
example we can easily see that to allow a young man 
to depend on the " home folks " until he is of age is 
simply to cultivate a lack of backbone. 

The Self-Made Man showed a pardonable pride in 
his achievement of assuming the burden of his sup- 
port at the age of thirteen. But of course he had no 



Chap. vi. MINOR CHARITIES OF EQUALITY. 47 

intention of putting his own record forward as the 
high-water mark of Independence. On the contrary, 
his generous soul would be thrilled with delight to 
know that others had surpassed him, — had begun to 
be self-supporting at the age of twelve, or possibly 
even of eleven years. He does not wish to monopolize 
all the credit in the world. 

Now if the Self-Made Man will put all thoughts of 
envy behind him, and let his soul freely exult in the 
achievements of others, we will engage to introduce 
him to a series of disclosures that will plunge him 
into progressive spasms of ecstasy. We will show 
him future citizens who have learned to earn their 
living not merely at the mature age of twelve or 
eleven years, but at nine, and eight, and seven, and 
six. He shall gaze upon children of these ages keep- 
ing the long sweat-shop hours of labor with their 
elders and doing almost full hands' work at cigar- 
making, or button-hole finishing, or box-pasting, or 
furniture-polishing. He shall marvel at the inde- 
pendence of rag-pickers of five years; a boot-black of 
four shall give him a shine; he shall buy his news- 
paper from a merchant whose baby accents show him 
to be barely if at all over three years old. In fact, 
we do not despair of capping his pyramid of wonders 
by showing him an infant of, say, one month who has 
achieved financial independence in the manner sug- 
gested by Swift — by filling chief place on the bill-of- 
fare of some rich recipient of the World's charity. 

And we should cordially agree with the Self-Made 
Man that this last achievement is the greatest of all; 
that we should rather be that baby than fill any other 
of the high places on this unique roll of honor! . . . 



48 THE WORLD'S CHARITABLE LIST. Book II. 

Strange to say, the classes yielding us these prodi- 
gies of early independence produce comparatively 
few examples of conspicuous success in later life. We 
are perhaps entitled to infer from this that they are 
somewhat pauperized. According to the principles of 
the Self-Made Man a youth who earned his living at 
four should be a millionaire at fourteen and president 
of the United States at twenty-one. 

Strange that the Constitution does not sanction 
presidents at twenty-one! But after all, perhaps it 
does not much matter, for there seems to be some mys- 
terious hitch between promise and fulfillment. 
Youths qualified for the presidency at twenty-one are 
shy of coining forward. The soil that starts these 
prodigies so fruitfully fails to bring them to maturity. 
And with the permission of the Self-Made Man we 
put forward the hypothesis of pauperism to account 
for this failure. 

If charitable giving be the cause of pauperism 
there is some basis for this hypothesis. There is giv- 
ing, and a great deal of giving, among these classes. 
It would puzzle the Self-Made Man's children to find 
among them much that is given, or in fact much of 
anything tangible, to be given, received, or held. 
But of giving there is an amount unprecedented in the 
experience of the Self-Made Man; for these people 
are constantly giving their all. 

Anyone coming to a study of this subject for the 
first time cannot fail to be astonished beyond measure 
at the generosity of the very poor. They seem to be 
ready to share their last loaf of bread and last pound 
of coal, not merely with their own flesh and blood, 
but with their neighbors, and with the stranger within 



Chap. vi. MINOR CHARITIES OF EQUALITY. 49 

their gates. !No member of the well-to-do classes 
would think himself justified in making equivalent 
sacrifices for his own family or his dearest friend. 

But no one can trace the creation of any pauperism 
to these examples of self-sacrificing giving. They do 
not in any sense belong to the Charity of Condescen- 
sion. They are loans, to be repaid, not by Shylock 
measure, in kind and at a certain time; but in spirit. 
" I may need it just as badly myself some time; " 
" he '11 do as much by me or some other poor fellow 
when he 's able," — these are the ideas governing the 
apparently reckless generosity of these people. And 
very rarely is the moral obligation of this implied con- 
tract of honor repudiated. 

It must humble many a man of high self-esteem 
to find how greatly these people surpass him in the 
lore of the kingdom of heaven. It might well give 
him further food for thought to note how wisely this 
mutual help is made to serve the ends of wise charity. 
It is almost pure help to self-help. Every acceptance 
of a gift includes acceptance of a moral obligation; 
every fulfillment of one of these obligations binds 
some one else in bonds of honor. The whole system 
acts and reacts with the one purpose and result of 
putting off to the utmost the bitter day which shall 
force resort to the Charity of Condescension. 

And yet to a large proportion of this class the latter 
comes steadily on with the relentlessness of gravity. 
What avail heroism and high resolve and desperate 
diligence in an endless contest with the blind material 
forces? The strength and aspiration of human life 
is a fleeting glory; the inertia of matter is eternal. 
Youth fades and strength fails, the sternest resolve 



50 THE WORLD'S CHARITABLE LIST. Book II. 

begins to weaken and the black pall of despair begins 
to settle down. To paraphrase Whittier, — 

When hope is lost, when courage dies, 
The man is dead, 

— dead to all possibility of helping and uplifting this 
poor World that so sadly needs such help as his might 
have been. The Charity of Equality could not or 
would not give that this man's hope might be kept 
alive within him ; it now devolves upon the Charity of 
Condescension to grant him, — all she usually gives, — 
a living burial. 

Here, indeed, we have pauperism, as suspected by 
the Self-Made Man. But the pauperism does not ex- 
plain the failure of these people to win wealth and 
position; their long, desperate struggle for a liveli- 
hood against great odds, it is, that finally issues in 
pauperism. 

The Self-Made Man says obstacles only spurred him 
on to greater effort. This may be true, — of some 
obstacles. It is rather exhilarating to step over a log 
or leap a fence; a mountain range is a different thing. 

The Self-Made Man believes that any class blessed 
with such an early start in life as these people, should 
develop prodigies of material success. Its failure to 
do this indicates, he thinks, something wrong. 

But we may remember that there is an alternative 
theory — that of the philosopher previously men- 
tioned. He thinks that a long period of adolescence 
for training and education is essential for the best 
development and strength and progress. Of course 
we could not give his opinion the weight attaching to 



Chap. vi. MINOR CHARITIES OF EQUALITY. 51 

that of the Self -Made Man, but now that our exam- 
ination of the facts has raised some difficulties in the 
way of the latter, we may be allowed to see if the 
philosopher's theory at all fits the case. 

The very poor wage-earners present an example of 
a class robbed of childhood. The long period of 
development, of training, of education, of strength- 
ening for future struggles, is in their case simply left 
out. The funds of the Charity of Equality, upon 
which the children of better circumstances draw for 
these purposes, are for them almost non-existent. 
They pass, like the lower animals, from their mothers' 
breasts to the ranks of bread-winners. 

The fighting is grim in the bread-winning ranks. 
They are facing the heaviest artillery of the age, the 
most accurate small-arms, the most thoroughly- 
trained soldiers, the greatest captains, the most effi- 
cient commissariat. And they, — they have the arms 
God gave them, though not knowing their proper use ; 
they have no training and no leaders; and their day's 
supplies are what they can win by their day's fighting. 

Truly an inspiring opportunity to learn the art of 
war. The Self-Made Man is confident that in such 
close proximity to its highest development he could 
soon master all military science! But dead men are 
not apt pupils, and soldiers slain on the battlefield 
have small chance to learn the skill that was their 
undoing. In fact, the battle is decided against these 
unfortunates before the fighting begins; their case is 
already hopeless, — if they only knew it. 

Yet this whole class is fighting just such a fight. 
They begin life's contest unprepared and unprovided, 
and with all the odds against them. As a class they 



52 THE WORLD'S CHARITABLE LIST. Book II. 

are doomed to unbroken defeat; the severity of the 
struggle is such that they cannot possibly sustain it. 
If a few of them meet with some trifling success, or 
are able to leave their ranks and join the opposing 
army, this has small effect on the wide front of battle. 

Thus irrational hope is all that keeps these workers 
from pauperism. Not seeing that their case is hope- 
less they toil and struggle and dare and aspire, and 
will not give up to die. Yet their lack of help from 
the Charity of Equality has practically settled their 
fate in advance. The withholding from them of the 
means' to prepare for successful fighting has started 
a relentless pressure before which they must in the 
end give way. 

The ranks of this class contain, we believe, some 
of the best character-material to be found on this 
mundane sphere. The strength of spirit, the courage, 
the diligence, the intelligence which they must 
possess who can grapple with the difficulties of their 
environment, and live an honorable life, and rear an 
honest family, — as thousands of them do, — or even 
raise themselves a few steps in the material scale, — 
as many of them do,— or actually mount to an honor- 
able place among society's right-hand men, — as a few 
of them do, — no nation can afford to scorn or neglect. 

The Charity of Equality can, if it will, save this 
priceless character-stuff to life and hope at a cost that 
is trifling compared with the mere funeral expenses 
if it be allowed to die. Eestore to these people their 
childhood and youth, — comfort, encourage, cheer 
them; arm them, train them, teach them; let them go 
forth to battle adequately provided: — they will not 
fail to furnish their quota of conquerors. And yet 



Chap. vi. MINOR CHARITIES OF EQUALITY. 53 

men who might apply the Charity of Equality to their 
needs find their principal comfort in the knowledge 
that the Charity of Condescension is ready to con- 
duct the funeral if worst comes to worst. 

We have seen that the large giving that goes on 
among these people is not pauperizing in its effect, — 
far from it; it is a wise mutual helpfulness toward 
self-help — (or, perhaps, we should rather say, a des- 
perate mutual assistance to escape the blight of the 
Charity of Condescension). But outside of this 
mutual assistance Charity has little to do with them. 
They shun — as does every sane person — the Charity 
of Condescension; the Charity of Equality hardly 
shows its face to them except as seen in their own 
mutual efforts. Is this withholding pauperizing these 
people? 

Strictly speaking, we cannot say it is; we are con- 
sidering in this chapter only those who have not yet 
gone so far. Yet it is evidently preparing the con- 
ditions for their ultimate pauperization. Their lack 
of preparation for the bread-winning struggle plunges 
them into a life of hopeless poverty, and the relent- 
less pressure which such poverty generates is a part 
of the pauperizing process. The terrible strain racks 
and bends a man's powers of endurance, but he des- 
perately holds out; he is self-supporting. But the 
strain never ceases ; it strains more and more and 
bends further until hope breaks down, and the man is 
a pauper. The pauperizing process is now com- 
pleted, but it began when first the strain was applied. 

" But this strain can be triumphantly resisted, and a 
fine character gained in the struggle," says the Self- 



54 THE WORLDS CHARITABLE LIST. Book II. 

Made Man. Sometimes, no doubt, but not generally; 
on the average the strain is a breaking one. We in- 
vite the Self-Made Man to test his faith in his doc- 
trine by subjecting his children to this strain; we 
stand ready to rejoice with him over their success if 
they come out triumphant. But his doctrine and 
practice fail to agree here. The fact remains that on 
the broad average, and leaving out of account freaks 
and heroes like our Self-Made Man, the strain is the 
triumphant force, and is sweeping the forces that 
oppose it slowly but relentlessly back. Gravity is 
drawing this stream of precious humanity to its de- 
struction: demons might laugh to see frantic attempts 
made to stop the glacier-like movement by forcing the 
children into the ranks at ten, or eight, or six years 
of age. 

Manifest destiny is never cajoled by a sop; plenty 
can never be secured by eating our seed-grain. The 
training and nourishing of the children are the seed- 
grain of prosperity for any class; to turn them to 
bread-winning in tender years will assuredly blight 
the harvest of the future. And a nation's workers 
are its seed-grain; to let the hope that makes them 
men perish within them is to trample under foot the 
growing crop that must supply us with both seed-grain 
and bread in the coining years. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE MEDIUM CHARITIES. THE GIFT OF SEED-GRAIN. 

In the very beginning of this chapter we are con- 
fronted by a large and important class of charities 
that obstructs our classification. This class consists 
of the educational charities; — our universities, col- 
leges, academies, institutes and technical schools, 
where education is furnished at a fraction, and often 
a small fraction, of its actual cost. Let us stop a 
moment to consider some of the anomalies which these 
charities present. 

According to all reasonable analogy the educational 
charities should certainly belong to the Charity of 
Condescension. Their funds are usually given by 
some rich man or woman for the purpose of defraying 
part of the expense of education for those who are un- 
able or unwilling to clef ray all of it themselves. These 
funds are practically all consumed by persons entirely 
unknown to the giver, and who have not the slightest 
claim of relationship or friendship upon him. He is 
therefore certainly entitled to be as condescending in 
his attitude toward his beneficiaries as Mrs. B. herself. 

Yet, as we all know, he condescends not at all, or 
if he do, he has no audience. His beneficiaries have 
no self-abasement to proffer him in return for his con- 
descension. They consider themselves quite as good 
as their benefactor, and apparently in many cases 
think the charity his funds maintain is deeply indebted 
to them for accepting it. 

55 



56 THE WORLD'S CHARITABLE LIST. Book II. 

Yet a curious distinction is current in the popular 
mind regarding such institutions. Those which 
charge nothing whatever for the training they dispense 
are considered charities, and a certain stigma is sup- 
posed to attach to their beneficiaries. On the other 
hand those which make a nominal charge, — say one- 
third to one-half the cost of the education they offer, 
— are looked upon as praiseworthy but struggling busi- 
ness ventures, to help which, by entering their classes, 
is a delicate testimony of good-will. 

It is probably unnecessary to follow this subtile 
logical discrimination further than to remark that it 
is too weak to support a very strong stigma; and ac- 
cordingly we find the stigma in such cases lacking 
robustness and incapable of doing serious harm. But 
the reason the beneficiaries of educational charities 
decline to meet condescension half-way concerns us 
deeply. We should be most glad to keep some other 
present and prospective charities from drifting into 
the ranks of the Charities of Condescension. 

The most important reason, we think, is simply that 
the results of the help dispensed by the educational 
charities are almost invariably beneficial. Prejudice 
cannot prevent the public esteem from ultimatelv 
recognizing a real and solid benefit. A spectre stigma 
is soon forgotten. The stigma attaching to the accept- 
ance of most forms of the Charities of Condescension 
maintains a real existence because it is so often justi- 
fied by the facts, — because a large proportion of such 
charity does pauperize. But educational charity 
never pauperizes; to attempt to fasten a stigma upon 
it would be futile. 

But to go a step further back, the reason the results 



Chap. vii. THE MEDIUM CHARITIES. 57 

of the educational charities are always beneficial is to 
be found in the fact that they conform precisely to the 
general rule we have accepted as limiting the wise 
charities, — they help only toward self-help. Further, 
they compass this by giving, as we have advocated, 
help to future effort only, — help which cannot bo 
used as help to idleness. They give seed-grain which, 
wisely cultivated, will give a bountiful future harvest, 
but from which no present bread can be made. 

A further advantage which educational charities 
possess which tends to keep them out of the ranks of 
the Charities of Condescension, is the fact that the 
rich are drawn to accept their gifts because only thus 
can they get the very best education. But where the 
rich are accepting the same charity by their side the 
poor recipients naturally do not feel greatly abased by 
accepting it also. A reason of no great moral weight, 
perhaps, but human nature is not to be entirely 
ignored. The World is to be commended, rather than 
blamed, for being quick to shape her systems to deal 
respectfully with human foibles. 

We may well drink deeply of the wisdom embodied 
in the educational charities. Purely Charities of 
Equality, though springing from the ground which 
grows mainly Charities of Condescension, always help- 
ing, never pauperizing, the educational charities are, 
in their principal features, almost ideal. They cover 
only a comparatively narrow field; to spread their ex- 
cellencies over the whole field of human needs we may 
well accept as the present limit of our aspirations. 

The field in which w T e now proceed to investigate 
the results of charity consists of our American middle 



58 THE WORLDS CHARITABLE LIST. Book II. 

classes. The charity dispensed here is almost ex- 
clusively the Charity of Equality; Mrs. B.'s charitable 
doles are very rarely large enough to come in this 
class. 

It will, of course, be understood that this phrase has 
no reference to the " middle class " of recent English 
literature, which means the class next in position to 
the aristocracy or nobility. In fact, no reference is 
intended to social position at all; our "middle 
classes " are simply those whose incomes and whose 
gifts to the Charity of Equality are intermediate in 
amount between those of the rich and those of the 
very poor. 

This is at best a highly indefinite class, and little 
can be said in the way of defining it further. But it 
may help toward forming a satisfactory conception 
of it to say that we mean to take as its lower extreme 
those workingmen who are not without command of 
funds, and who are making progress in the world; 
while at the upper end we think that this class does 
not properly include any whose wealth is so great as to 
make them willing to spend it in pure display. 
Between these extremes we undoubtedly include a 
highly miscellaneous company; but one sufficiently 
homogeneous to enable us to make certain important 
affirmations apply to the whole. These are: 

(1) They have the means to prepare their children, 
to some extent at least, for the responsibilities of 
mature age; and use such means with a clear under- 
standing of the necessity of such preparation. 

(2) They have a strong sense of the inadequacy of 
any provision they can make for their children unless 
the children supplement it by earnest effort; and they 



Chap. vii. THE MEDIUM CHARITIES. 59 

uniformly inculcate the duty and necessity of regular 
work and determined striving. 

That is to say, — to put it in the vernacular, — they 
have something, and they have something to get ; and 
the gap between the two is not so great as to make 
it seem hopeless to bridge it. And practically our 
whole middle class is vigorously employed bridging 
this chasm, each for himself, — -weighing the means 
in hand against the end desired; adding his personal 
energy to the means to make it equal to the end ; using 
the newly-acquired end as a means to a further end; 
and pushing on in ever-widening circles to new ac- 
tivities. Thus is supplied the main motive power 
which moves the world forward. 

In this manner the Charity of Equality among this 
class, through the education and training for fruitful 
effort which it affords the children, becomes the 
starting-point for a vast mass of the forces of social 
progress. 

Now it is of course easy for any observer looking 
over the field of his acquaintance to cull a choice 
bouquet of marked exceptions to this cheerful picture 
of frugality and thrift. We know perfectly well that 
youth is thoughtless; that a plentiful crop of wild 
oats is observable in almost any social circle in our 
middle classes; that there are black sheep in every 
large family group; that anyone who wishes to look 
mainly on the dark side can easily make himself sick 
at heart with apprehension. Of course any such 
general statement as we have just made must be 
covered over deep with qualifications to make it 
impregnable. 

Nevertheless we maintain, and we believe careful 



60 THE WORLD'S CHARITABLE LIST. Book II. 

consideration of the facts known to him will convince 
anyone, that our statement is, broadly weighed, quite 
correct. The middle one of the strata into which we 
divide society is the region in which we find prac- 
tically universal preparation for work, universal ac- 
tivity, universal hope, universal ambition. We find 
here, — personal misfortunes of course excepted, — no 
dull despair such as shuts a man completely away 
from the world of hope; we find, on the other hand, 
no satiety such as makes earth's riches a mockery and 
life a dull round of ennui. Life is in this class, so 
far as economic conditions control it, mainly rational, 
sane, wholesome; its normal and ordinary course 
teaches and illustrates the need of preparation, the 
necessity of effort, the cheer of progress, the weight 
of responsibility. 

This view may strike many persons of large ex- 
perience as too optimistic. Very likely many observ- 
ers who knew it well would say that the dominant 
note of our middle class is business anxiety and 
nervous apprehension of financial misfortune. We 
cannot deny that this note is a prominent one. The 
fearful spectacle of pauperism and suffering among 
the very poor, always before their eyes, is enough to 
unnerve the men of the middle class, particularly its 
lower portion, — and it does largely unnerve them. 
Many a representative of the more prosperous por- 
tion, also, of this class comes into frequent close con- 
tact with the distressed poor, and, being less thick- 
skinned than our Self-Made Man, cannot avoid seeing 
that their suffering is more undeserved misfortune 
than merited punishment, — that circumstances clue to 
no fault of his own might plunge him into similar 



Chap. vii. THE MEDIUM CHARITIES. Gl 

misery. And, as we all know, concrete instances of 
just such plunges are by no means scarce. All this 
generates a deep-seated apprehension of coming- 
trouble, which too often stalks like a spectre through 
the lives of people of our middle class. It is undoubt- 
edly a great nervous drain on the strength of its vic- 
tims, and interferes lamentably with sane judgment 
and power for hopeful work. 

Xor is the menace of bitter poverty the only in- 
fluence counteracting the wholesome intermediate 
situation of our middle class. The class merges in- 
sensibly at its upper margin into that of the very rich, 
and its members are constantly striving to cross the 
line, — and succeeding, in considerable numbers. And 
not only when they cross, but by anticipation for a 
long time before, do the standpoints, the ideals, and 
the prejudices of the very rich become theirs by 
adoption. What these are, their merits and demerits, 
we shall consider in the next chapter; but they are 
certainly not in exact harmony with the ideas and 
practices which we have hailed as preeminently the 
glory of the middle class; and the effusive worship 
rendered them by many still without the border of 
this materialistic Promised Land detracts seriously 
from the strength, and still more from the sanity and 
dignity of the middle class. 

But making every reasonable allowance for the 
gravity of these inroads into its strength, the middle 
class has yet millions who have neither trembled at the 
lash of Hunger nor bowed the knee to Mammon. 
These, we are convinced, are its dominant influence, 
though not at all its noisiest portion. These look 
upon material wealth as a means to be always used to 



62 THE WORLD'S CHARITABLE LIST. Book II. 

some good end ; and more particularly upon the wealth 
they have to spend upon their children, or to leave 
to them, as a fund for education, and for preparation 
for life-work. Their children in general accept the 
same ideas, and are ruled by them in large degree, 
though youth can never give to advice the weight 
maturity is forced to give to experience. But in due 
season experience demonstrates to the children the 
advice which they had before accepted but had not 
fully valued, and they come to look upon the money 
they have received from their parents as a trust fund 
for the education and training of their children. 
Thenceforth they stand where their parents stood, 
and the ruling idea goes on with scarcely a break in 
its influence. 

Comparatively rarely is this rule ignored. An 
accession of prosperity which they have earned easily 
turns men's minds to the indulgence of some pet 
desire; on the other hand such an unhallowed whim 
is not often allowed to break into the inherited funds 
they consider semi-sacred. The effervescence of 
youth indulges itself freely with its first self-earned 
money; it requires a reprobate to squander with 
similar unconcern the money his parents have set 
apart for his education. 

In speaking thus in generalities of what is really a 
mass of particulars one can hardly avoid a sense that 
every affirmation needs a half-dozen qualifications. 
At every statement he sets down, a shoal of refractory 
examples rush into his mind, and demand a retraction. 
Yet the truth, if it is to have any practical value, must 
be freed from the annoyance of these insect-swarms 
of exceptions, and set apart by itself. A main truth 



Chap. vii. THE MEDIUM CHARITIES. 63 

discovered and followed leads somewhere; the excep- 
tions are simply devices to draw us off from the main 
road and lose us in a beg. 

Now, exceptions to the contrary notwithstanding, 
our middle class is a noble exemplar of the true prin- 
ciples of charitable giving and receiving. It receives 
immense gifts from the Charity of Equality without 
being pauperized by them; it makes a wise use of 
them; it increases them and passes them on. It so 
manages these funds that its children have a good 
preparation for effort, and are furnished with a 
rational goal toward which to strive. Its conditions 
generate and justify hope, cheer, and ambition; and 
its most patent result is an almost universal activity, 
reasonably well directed and highly fruitful. 

We are certainly justified in accepting this state of 
things as including much that is good enough to be 
worth extending to the other strata of society. 

We understand, of course, that this sort of talk 
about the class of moderate prosperity brings a 
choleric purple to the face of certain persons who 
criticize its characteristics very vigorously from the 
standpoint of aesthetics. A controversy upon this 
point, however, is entirely outside the ground of our 
present inquiry. So far as such strictures are just 
they spring mainly from causes not economic. A 
sane and wholesome economic status is certainly the 
best soil in which to grow aesthetic as well as ethical 
reforms. Our prosperous middle class may be hope- 
lessly vulgarized, but we doubt if its susceptibility to 
the aesthetic propaganda would be sensibly increased 
by a return to disease and dirt. The clashing discord 



G4 THE WORLD'S CHARITABLE LIST. Book II. 

which these writers seem to consider inevitable be- 
tween their ideals and economic progress, we are con- 
vinced is mythical. Surely no legitimate gratification 
of the aesthetic nature can require the cherishing of 
wrongs and enormities. But if our apostles of cul- 
ture really come to wish for the retention of economic 
abuses for their aesthetic value we fear they are 
doomed to ultimate defeat. 

A whole class of annoying misconceptions may, we 
think, be alluded to briefly while we are on this sub- 
ject. People in possession of lofty ideals assume that 
lowly questions are their natural enemies. They are 
consumed with religious ardor, and will not even 
glance at questions of cookery; or they yearn to eradi- 
cate the social vices of our cities, and sanitary plumb- 
ing may become a lost art so far as they are concerned. 
Yet a good meal is a step toward religious attainment ; 
and every triumph of sanitary science and its resulting 
cleanliness leaves vice a smaller hold on life. We 
must build the structure of life by beginning with the 
foundations, and he who decides to begin higher up is 
simply building in the air. To provide reasonable 
and satisfactory w 7 ays and means of ordinary life may 
seem a sordid aim, but it is fertilizing and smoothing 
the soil from which the great achievements spring. 
And great things cannot spring from any other source 
than the common soil of Mother Earth. To allow this 
soil to remain rocky and brier-grown is to resign the 
hope of future fields of grain and burdened fruit-trees. 
To solve the homely problems is a great step toward 
solving the higher ones; to attempt solution of the 
higher difficulties while the lower ones still balk us 



Chap. vii. THE MEDIUM CHARITIES. 65 

lands us in a fantastic and unreal dream, and gen- 
erates unnumbered confusions and absurdities. 

So in attempting to work toward a modest ideal of 
life and labor for the people as a whole, we assume 
that we are in partnership with all more lofty aims, 
and are indirectly working for their ends. But our 
immediate objective point is wise economic conditions, 
and we should refuse to have our judgment on this 
point befogged by a charge that the economic class we 
approve does not show ideal moral and aesthetic re- 
sults. Neither does the very poor class, nor the very 
rich ; they will show them the sooner the more quickly 
they are purged of their present enormities. And 
the morals and manners of all classes will be benefited 
by a readjustment which will prevent the vices and 
failings of one class from intensifying those of the 
others. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE MAJOR CHARITIES. PAUPERIZING BY EXCESS. 

What we have called the Major Charities are only 
to be studied among the very rich, and they invariably 
belong to the Charity of Equality. No person who 
gives such sums as we are now to consider ever thinks 
of assuming an attitude of condescension. JSTo person 
who receives a princely fortune ever considers himself 
as being put under an obligation thereby. 

"We confess to some diffidence in undertaking to 
investigate the workings of charity in this particular 
field. Our acquaintance with the subject-matter of 
our investigation is not so intimate as we could desire. 
Were we to be restricted rigidly to the facts of our 
immediate personal knowledge this chapter would 
probably remain unwritten. The millionaires of our 
acquaintance we can count on our fingers without any 
difficulty, and of these not one even claims to repre- 
sent that highly select circle of fabulous wealth, the 
apex of our social pyramid, which we so greatly desire 
to investigate. 

But our needs have been anticipated. The enter- 
prising journals which ornament our fourth estate 
have for some years past been in the habit of seeking 
out information as to the characteristics, thoughts, 
modes of living and surroundings of these aristocrats, 
and disseminating it through the medium of their 
columns to the open-mouthed world below. We can- 
not claim to have digested all of these revelations as 



Chap. viii. THE MAJOR CHARITIES. 67 

they appeared ; still, with what we have read ourselves, 
and what our friends have revealed to us, our share 
has been pretty amply made up. In fact, we have 
received more information on this subject than can 
possibly be reliable, and in trying to picture, from this 
superabundant material, the state of affairs really ob- 
taining among this class as to charitable giving and 
receiving, we shall need to exercise our best critical 
sagacity. 

But for the purposes of our investigation we do not 
need a microscopic knowledge of our rich receivers 
of charity. We are not seeking to draw a minute por- 
trait of one of them, after the manner of our fin-de- 
siecle fiction. We shall not deal with his bearing 
toward his butler, his taste in dress, or the geniality 
into which he relaxes when secluded within the bosom 
of his family. Of course knowledge of this sort is 
highly desirable and ornamental, but it is not indis- 
pensable; we shall proceed as best we can without it. 
Asking pardon in advance for the improprieties which 
we may commit by reason of our unacquaintance with 
the diviner air of these sacred precincts, we beg leave 
to survey them in imagination. We shall try to keep 
on safe ground in this investigation by drawing our 
important conclusions from facts which have long 
been tolerably familiar even to the outer world, and 
which are not likely to be challenged. 

The word " millionaire " comes easily into one's 
mind as describing the class now under examination, 
and it is not altogether misleading in the general idea 
it conveys. We think, however, that the character- 
istics which are usually associated in the popular mind 



68 THE WORLD'S CHARITABLE LIST. Book II. 

with the idea of a Millionaire are generally developed 
long before a man's possessions approximate a million 
dollars. We would therefore define the class whose 
charities we are about to consider as " those popularly 
regarded as Millionaires." 

One thing we must not fail to remember is, that a 
large portion of our Millionaires are typical self-made 
men. They are simply representatives of our middle 
class who have by exceptional ability risen (or strayed) 
out of their natural environment. But their influence 
upon the standing of the Millionaires as a class is a 
typical middle-class influence. They are active, push- 
ing, ambitious; using each end gained as a means for 
compassing a new end; accustomed to moving their 
objective point along before them as they progress so 
that it is always a safe distance ahead of them, — in 
short, they are exactly like the middle class as we have 
found it in their capacity to expand into new activities. 

But this expansion is mainly quantitative, — that is, 
from one amount of money to a larger. The Self- 
Made Man is too thoroughly trained as a war-horse of 
commercial life to assume easily ideals whose value 
is unknown on 'Change. He may leave his money to 
found a university or to carry on some other charity, 
for he is very likely to think it good form to carry 
some such reserve ideal in his mind for use in that 
mythical future when he " has time." But he usually 
dies in harness, and leaves the problem of the ultimate 
use of his money for his children to wrestle with. And 
in addition he usually leaves them the money itself. 

Here, of course, is where the case comes within our 
field of investigation. While the Self-Made Man is 
disbursing money amassed by his own endeavors, 



Chap. viii. THE MAJOR CHARITIES. 69 

whether we like his use of it or not, our lips are sealed 
to criticism by our own accepted principles. But now 
it is a charitable gift in the hands of his children, and 
its effects for good or for evil are of vital interest to 
us in the line of our inquiry. 

An important change in the principles controlling 
this money is now observable. The Self-Made Man 
began his career by having something and wanting 
something else. But his children begin their careers 
by having almost every purchasable thing that the 
mind of man could desire; and there is danger that, 
unless somebody have inoculated them with wants of 
real moving power, they may not wish for anything 
else intensely enough to work for it. 

But have they been inoculated with desires that will 
move them to effort? and if so, what are those desires? 

In a large proportion of the cases, far more numer- 
ous we think than is generally supposed to be the case, 
the sons of the self-made men have caught the infec- 
tion from their fathers, and are carrying on their work 
in the same lines and with the same ideals. The result 
of this is satisfactory enough in one respect, — the son 
is saved from stagnation, his powers are developed, he 
follows his father in the paths of self-reliance and sus- 
tained activity, and — the fortune the latter left keeps 
on growing. But this is simply extending the money- 
getting ideals of the first through the life of the second 
generation, and leaves the same old problem of spend- 
ing the money to be wrestled with by the grand- 
children. The ideal of endlessly laboring to increase 
wealth which is already large cannot in the nature of 
things be satisfactory. Sooner or later, in one gen- 
eration or the next, its possessors turn from the task 



70 THE WORLD'S CHARITABLE LIST. Book II. 

with loathing; the business of making and caring for 
their money is entrusted to hirelings, and we find new 
ideals controlling its disposition. 

Think of the issues hanging on the choice of these 
ideals! Here is a young man, undeveloped, unproved, 
a stranger to responsibility, fallen heir to a fortune of 
multiplied millions. Shall he use it as seed-grain? 
Imagination cannot grasp the infinity of rich harvests 
that may follow. Shall he spend it in riotous living? 
Or shall he feebly halt undecided between the one 
course and the other, like a richly-laden ship among 
the rocks with no hand on the tiller? — Was ever so 
magnificent a truncheon committed to such feeble 
hands? Many an event that looms large in the world's 
history sinks into insignificance beside the importance 
of such a decision. 

We do not need to be reminded that at this parting 
of the ways many have chosen nobly. Many magni- 
ficent gifts of money have been dedicated by their 
legal owners to the service of the race; and the pos- 
session of a fortune has in many a case made possible 
the dedication of a noble life to noble ends. And such 
instances are not exceptional; on every hand the tre- 
mendous and constantly-growing endowments of our 
educational and charitable institutions are reminders 
that the wealthy are coming to look upon their riches 
as carrying an obligation, — and are nobly redeeming 
their bond. 

Yet, although we have not the slighest desire to 
underrate the contributions to such sources from rich 
beneficiaries of the Charity of Equality, the most con- 
spicuous instances of magnificent generosity that we 
are able to recall are those of men who had themselves 



Chap. viii. THE MAJOR CHARITIES. 71 

made the money they gave. Our self-made men may 
not be models in every respect, yet they have shared 
the common lot, and are not unlikely to have keen and 
deep insight into the common need. We find that 
their ranks produce many who know the true seed- 
grain of self-dependent effort, and are not afraid to 
give the fruit of their life-long toil to purchase it and 
dedicate it to the uplifting of the world. The gifts 
to education of Girard, Hopkins, Peabody, Cooper, 
Packer, and others of their kind, should make us 
hesitate before again speaking irreverently of the Self- 
Made Man. 

This is not said in the way of complaining of the 
Millionaires-by-charity. We have it on good authority 
that their gifts to the cause of education and to other 
worthy movements have been extremely generous, and 
have answered all the requirements of good form. 
But it is likewise evident that these gifts have not in 
the least strained their resources. However praise- 
worthy and acceptable they may be they are not the 
sort of gifts that reveal the givers' hearts. We are 
seeking now to find what ideals these Millionaires have 
chosen; but such gifts as these do not indicate the 
devotion belonging to an ideal. Measure them by the 
gifts of the noble group of self-made men we have 
just named, and it can be easily seen that, however im- 
posing the gifts in themselves may be, we must search 
further for the givers' ideals. 

That a large proportion of our Millionaires have 
made no choice of ideals, and in fact have never con- 
sciously come to a parting of the ways where choice 
was necessary, we think is reasonably certain. They 
would probably be disinclined to apologize for this. 



72 THE WORLD'S CHARITABLE LIST. Book II. 

Ordinary men of our middle class, they might say, do 
not have to strive after high-flying ideals to be ac- 
counted useful citizens ; — why should they ? Have 
they not a right to eat, drink and be merry, and to 
seclude their leisure in the most select circles of 
society? 

But an ideal, in our view, need not be high-flying at 
all; its function is simply to draw out a man's earnest 
effort. For the ordinary middle-class man the task 
of earning a living does this very fully and with very 
good results. He amply justifies the charity which 
was expended on his rearing and training if he gain 
an honorable living for his family, and properly rear 
and train his children. But our Millionaire-by- 
inheritance has had this work done for him, and the 
charitable fund which he inherits has immense possi- 
bilities over and above the most ample provision for 
his children. To make of this vast fund as meritorious 
use as our plodding middle-class man has made of his 
it is necessary to choose an ideal, and one sufficiently 
high-flying to evoke our Millionaire's strenuous en- 
deavors. His right to eat, drink and be merry is not 
disputed by the World: — (she is, however, thinking 
very intently on this subject). But it is the right of 
a pilot to sleep while a richly-laden ship committed to 
his care drifts aimlessly ; what shall we say of the right 
of anyone to entrust such a ship to such care? 

It may very reasonably be pointed out that beside 
the Millionaires who devote their lives and money to 
noble purposes, on the one hand, and those who eat, 
drink and are merry, on the other, there is a consid- 
erable number of very rich men who are active in 
cultivating the refinements of literature, science, art, 



Chap. vm. THE MAJOR CHARITIES. 73 

music, etiquette, and even occasionally politics; and 
who, while not, perhaps, bearing a banner with the 
device Excelsior, really devote to their hobbies a very 
fair amount of energy. It is this division of the ultra- 
rich that figures quite largely in newspaper and 
periodical literature as contributing to our American 
life a sadly-needed element of ease, breeding, tran- 
quillity and quiet refinement, the fruit of their release 
from sordid cares ; — an element, say these scribes, 
which has been all too nearly extinguished in the mad, 
engrossing, dehumanizing rush of our money-getting. 
The ample financial provision at the disposal of this 
circle has enabled them to be as an ark of refuge for 
the preservation of the traditions of lofty, serene and 
refined leisure from the tumultuous flood of democ- 
racy; and to cherish the precious seed until such time 
as the waters shall subside and an established order of 
nobility shall grow up among us. 

It is certainly a great advantage to be relieved of 
the sordid cares of earning a living, — or at least so it 
seems to the individual relieved. But since for every 
person so relieved a double burden is placed on some 
other person the advantage evidently depends largely 
on the point of view. Mrs. B. did not at all approve 
of the efforts of her protege to cultivate quiet refine- 
ment by retiring from the sordid scramble for a living, 
and were the privilege of criticism granted to her 
protege he might as little approve of a similar effort 
on the part of Mrs. B.'s circle. As we hold no brief 
for either Mrs. B.'s circle or that of her protege, we 
shall try to judge the case from a neutral standpoint 
— the standpoint of the general welfare ; and from this 
standpoint the crucial inquiry evidently is, What doth 



74 THE WORLD'S CHARITABLE LIST. Book n. 

this refined and elegant leisure profit society as a 
whole? — what amount of time and of seed-grain are 
we justified in spending to secure it? 

Looked at in this way, it can easily be seen that 
considerations of air, manner, bearing, do not go to the 
heart of the question, — they do not constitute a 
harvest which justifies such an outlay of seed-grain, 
or which indicates the expenditure of serious and 
strenuous effort. Allowing generous credit for all 
that can well be claimed in favor of this charmed circle 
of the ultra-rich, — that their gilded leisure has enabled 
them to attain to ease, breeding, distinction of manner 
and refinement; that we should be loath to have these 
qualities vanish from the world; that the strenuous 
activity of business life is not congenial soil for their 
development, — it is yet evident that the fruits they 
have shown us are not commensurate with their oppor- 
tunities. We are drawn to press still further the 
questions, But what ideal really rules their efforts? 
and, "What use has this ideal led them to make of their 
tremendous store of seed-grain ? 

We submit the following answers to these questions: 

(1) The best efforts of our Millionaires, so far as 
they are not devoted to the activities (or passivities) 
we have already considered, are mainly devoted to the 
ideal of Social Standing; and (2), The charitable funds 
in their hands, so far as we have not yet traced their 
destination, are principally used in attempting to com- 
pass this ideal by means of a Competitive Display of 
Wealth. 

These are rather harsh terms-. No doubt in recog- 
nition of the refined speech characteristic of the social 
circles we are now considering we should attempt to 



Chap. via. THE MAJOR CHARITIES. 75 

soften and refine them. In truth we would not have 
it thought that we picture the Millionaires as striving 
to outdo each other in the game of piling up pyramids 
of double-eagles in front of their Fifth Avenue resi- 
dences. What we mean is simply this: (1) That 
money spent to secure social standing is not spent for 
some concrete desideratum, but for the effect the ex- 
penditure produces upon other persons' minds, — that 
is, it is spent for display; and (2) that this effect is 
not produced by any positive property in the display 
itself, but by its exceeding some other display, — that 
is, it is competitive. In other words, Social Standing- 
consists, not in being at a certain height, but in being 
above other persons; and its devotees seek to win it, 
not by meeting certain requirements, but by outdoing 
other devotees. 

This is truly an expansive ideal. He who blazons 
the device Social Standing on his banner is at once 
emancipated from the mean-spirited maxim, Man 
wants but little here below. Henceforth, the earth, 
with all its fulness, is what he must seek. Accepting 
this ideal we can understand the perplexity of the 
World over her Charitable List, and her inability to 
pay living wages to her workers after she had tried to 
give each of her favorites the means to surpass all the 
others. Having come to an understanding of the 
meaning of Social Standing and the path by which it 
must be sought, we need no longer ask, What occupies 
our Millionaires? — what have they done with their 
seed-grain ? 

But, with deep submission to the Court — of Public 
Opinion — may we now be permitted to ask a few other 
questions? What significance has the pursuit of this 



76 THE WORLD'S CHARITABLE LIST. Book K. 

ideal in this manner ? Is it a meritorious and wise use 
of charitable funds? To what extent does it benefit 
society as a whole? How does it affect its immediate 
beneficiaries:— does it increase their ability and 
fortify their determination to help themselves? Is 
the World justified in pruning her minor charities so 
mercilessly in order to devote such vast sums to the 
pursuit of this ideal? 

An answer which is often made, either directly or 
by inference, to such queries as this, may be freely 
summarized as follows: Man cannot live by bread 
alone. It would be most unwise to limit the expendi- 
ture of the rich to purely material ends. The import- 
ance of the indirect service their expenditure renders 
to art, literature and science, social aspirations and 
ethical ideals, is hard to overrate. The money spent 
for a social gathering, may, to a miser, seem a pure 
waste, but would you try to suppress social life? The 
cost of an opera for one night would, of course, run a 
soup kitchen a whole winter; the stone-carving on a 
Millionaire's residence would erect model houses for a 
dozen workmen's families; — but can you allow no spir- 
itual value to music, no uplifting power to the percep- 
tion of the beautiful? Are they not, ultimately, 
richly worth their cost? It is not the material things 
for which the money of the rich is really spent, but 
the immaterial influences that accompany them; and 
these immaterial influences, the spiritual life of 
society, flow out freely from their source to enrich all 
who can receive them. 

To this very familiar line of argument we make 
answer: It is very true that it is the immaterial goods 
that we really seek; the material articles for which we 



Chap. viii. THE MAJOR CHARITIES. 77 

spend our money are but means by which we hope to 
obtain spiritual values. If it be true that the lavish 
expenditures of our Millionaires do yield us these 
spiritual values, while the scant outlay of the poor 
laborer goes to purchase only material ends, then it is 
indeed necessary for the World to allow the Million- 
aires their luxuries, even if she have to pinch still 
closer the poor man's supply of bread and coal. We 
can better afford to double the World's charitable 
allowance to the rich than to lose the things that lift 
us above the brutes. 

But do these immaterial riches depend in any sense 
upon the luxurious expenditure of the rich? We 
think not. Let us see. 

We must all admit that social life is a priceless good 
to the human race; we would not do anything to 
suppress or even to weaken it. But here we have 
a " society " function costing, say, one hundred 
thousand dollars, put forward as tending to foster this 
social life. Can we accept this as an expenditure for 
the promotion of the true social life of the race? 

Obviously, no; there is no relation between the 
expenditure and the supposed result. Would an ex- 
penditure of only ten thousand dollars do only one- 
tenth as much for the promotion of social life? — an 
expenditure of ten dollars only one-ten-thousandth as 
much? Manifest absurdity; the smallest sum not 
unlikely accomplishes ten times as much good as the 
largest. There is evidently no relation, unless an in- 
verse one, between the magnitude of the expenditure 
and the magnitude of the benefit. 

What then does this money accomplish? 

Money spent on such an entertainment is in reality 



78 THE WORLD'S CHARITABLE LIST. Book II. 

simply spent on competitive display for Social Stand- 
ing. It is spent on an entertainment, and at this en- 
tertainment some social life is doubtless manifested. 
But the expenditure has no tendency to foster social 
life; on the contrary, it tends to choke it, to kill it, to 
make its manifestation expensive to the point of pro- 
hibition. An exhibition of social life at an expense 
of one hundred thousand dollars is a notice to com- 
peting entertainers to beware of having a social occa- 
sion costing less money. Every successive instance of 
the sort makes it less possible to have social enjoy- 
ments at slight cost. The purpose of the competitive 
social display is reached when it comes to be under- 
stood that a certain degree of expensiveness is a sine 
qua non for a social entertainment. Then social life 
under this degree of costliness is, within the circle 
affected, strangled to death; — killed by the money 
supposed to be laid out for its benefit. 

It is substantially the same with all forms of in- 
tellectual or spiritual life; — the extravagant use of 
money in their service binds them in bonds to the 
spirit of competitive display. Instead of being used 
simply to command the necessary material conditions, 
the money is used to make these conditions elaborate 
and expensive. Music, art, architecture, the drama, 
even religion, are cumbered by a standard of costliness 
which is positively deadening to their free expression : 
— they must all pay tribute to the spirit of display 
before they can deliver their message to the mind of 
man. Small wonder that the message is so often in- 
consequential. 

The extent to which lavish expenditure really buys 
for us the immaterial possessions can be best appre- 



Chap. vin. THE MAJOR CHARITIES. 79 

ciated by an historical comparison. Think of the 
appointments of Shakespeare's stage as compared with 
those of our modern theatres, and then reckon the true 
command of money over dramatic power; or place the 
cathedrals of Europe by the marvels of the archi- 
tecture of to-day, and say to what extent the money 
poured out for these latter structures has availed us. 
Modern art is a vigorous growth, but so was that of 
the Middle Ages: — and the spiritual triumphs even 
of our modern art have had no financial godfather. 
Religion to-day is still an elemental force, as it was 
on the day of Pentecost, but we do not seek its loftiest 
messages in the sanctuaries whose luxury is too rare 
to be shared with strangers. It is the same wherever 
we look, — money dedicated to display is simply abso- 
lutely powerless to buy the triumphs of the higher 
life; it can only buy crushing loads of materialism 
which hang like a millstone upon all the nobler aspira- 
tions of humanity. 

It cannot be denied that in some cases money does 
hold the key to the intellectual activities. Much of 
the loftiest musical expression demands as a necessary 
condition of its existence that large sums of money 
be spent for costly instruments and apparatus; many 
of the noblest forms of achievement in art and archi- 
tecture are expensive by the law of their being. Nor 
can it be denied that display spends large sums on just 
these forms of art and architecture and music. It 
might seem to be a fair inference that here at least the 
lavish expenditure for social display confers a spiritual 
benefit. But grapes do not, cannot, grow from thorns, 
nor figs from thistles. The ideal of Social Standing 
is exclusiveness, and acts done in its service cannot 



80 THE WORLDS CHARITABLE LIST. Book II. 

possibly serve the spiritual kingdom, whose ideal is 
inclusiveness. Display may spend money like water 
for the paraphernalia and pomp and circumstance of 
art, but under her bidding art grows constrained, and 
her very costliness checks her inspiration. Such ex- 
penditure is not a service to art; it is an attempt to 
bind art to the service of display. But art, like the 
other fruits of the spirit, must be free, or she will not 
render true service. To bind her, even with chains 
of gold, chills her into torpor. 

Thus upon looking closely into the matter we are 
forced to the conclusion that the lavish expenditure of 
the rich upon the ideal of Social Standing cannot pos- 
sibly, even incidentally, confer spiritual benefits upon 
society. Spiritual good does not come by inadvertence 
or neglect ; we cannot cheat the forces of materialism 
into pulling the chariot of the Spirit. The expendi- 
ture of the rich takes its ultimate effect from the ideals 
that animate and guide it, and to search for some good 
work into which it may have strayed or blundered is a 
pure waste of time. 

But, to return again to our recent starting-point, 
what shall we say of the devotion of vast wealth and 
strenuous effort to this ideal of Social Standing pur- 
sued by means of competitive display? 

Let us try to apply our minds closely to this ideal 
of the Millionaires for a minute, and see just what it- 
involves, — what its devotees attempt to do, and what 
they gain when they achieve their desired results. 

Obviously the immediate object of each one is sim- 
ply to surpass some or all of the others. Let us take 
a concrete instance, — an extreme one, we shall doubt- 



Chap. viii. THE MAJOR CHARITIES. 81 

less be reminded, but one that clearly reveals the prin- 
ciple involved. Mrs. B., we will say, plans, and issues 
invitations for, a social function which is to cost one 
hundred thousand dollars, — and an infinite amount of 
trouble, forethought and inventive genius.* Fortune 
smiles upon her, and her designs are successful in all 
details, — her party is the most splendid of the season, 
and she is overwhelmed with congratulations. We, 
in our outer darkness, may doubt, but she feels in her 
inner heart that such a result is richly worth its cost. 

But now suppose her rival, Mrs. Van A., on the 
same date issues invitations for a function which is to 
cost twice as much, to be twice as noteworthy in all 
respects as Mrs. B.'s, and is set for the previous night. 
Mrs. B.'s attempt upon a stroke for Social Standing is 
now entirely thrown into the shade, and disappoint- 
ment and bitterness of heart are the result. Her 
money and effort buy nothing, — indeed, less than 
nothing: — a negative result. 

Evidently her lavish expenditure was inadequate to 
compass her result without cooperation, and the 
cooperation needed was simply the non-appearance of 
the competing display. But of course if she were 
assured of absence of competing display she might in- 
definitely reduce her outlay and still gain her end. 
In other words, Mrs. B. spends her money bravely, 
but inscrutable Fate gives or withholds the desired 
end at her own sweet pleasure. The spending of the 
money has not in itself the slightest power to com- 
mand the end sought. 

* The reader whose gorge rises at these figures is privileged to 
strike off a terminal cipher from each amount. 



82 THE WORLD'S CHARITABLE LIST. Book II. 

The truth is, that what Mrs. B. seeks is a relation, 
not a concrete end. She does not wish merely to 
spend one hundred thousand dollars, — to have a 
splendidly-appointed entertainment, — but to spend 
more than Mrs. Van A., — to outshine her as a hostess. 
Were her wealth and her social powers ten or a hun- 
dred times as great it would profit her nothing if at 
the same time Mrs. Van A.'s similar possessions were 
similarly multiplied. Treasure and effort without end 
could be thrown into this yawning chasm without the 
slightest change in the relative positions of the con- 
testants, — without in the least gaining the end desired 
by each. 

On the other hand, the money now spent for display 
could be diminished evenly all along the line with just 
as little result, — that is, with no result at all. Were 
Mrs. B. and her rivals impoverished by losing nine- 
tenths of their money, each one would maintain the 
same relative position as before. But the same is true 
of any conceivable diminution of the display funds: — 
one ten-thousandth or one ten-millionth of the present 
amount, distributed in the present proportions, would 
give exactly the present status. It follows of course 
that the whole tremendous outlay is pure waste. It is 
money spent in multiplying to infinity both sides of an 
equation in the hope of producing inequality, — which 
is the goal of social display. The ideal of Social 
Standing through Display is a cruel and delusive 
snare, — a violent madness which attacks its victims 
and causes them to throw their seed-grain and bread 
on a fire where they are utterly consumed without one 
iota of profit to any human soul. 

No arch-fiend of cruelty from among the gods of 



Chap. viii. THE MAJOR CHARITIES. 83 

heathen mythology could possibly exceed the devasta- 
tion wrought by this horrible divinity of Social Stand- 
ing. He is worshiped not only among our circle of 
Millionaires, where gold and precious stones are lav- 
ished on his temples, and where seed-grain enough to 
provide for millions is consumed upon his altars. Far 
down through the ranks of our middle class, and even 
into those of the very poor, do we find his admirers. 
Seeing the glory of the temple which is maintained for 
him among the very rich, they aspire to join in his 
worship, offer him their scanty seed-grain, and in his 
service blast their future harvests. But to one and 
all of his worshipers he is ever and always the same, 
■ — the inscrutable, infinite consumer: to no human soul 
does he render a return for the measureless sacrifices 
he demands. The unfailing fruits of his worship are 
broken hearts and burdened children and blackened 
futures; our greatest hope for coming light and peace 
lies in keeping the still-existing store of seed-grain out 
of his grasp. 

We find then, on analysis, that the ideal of Social 
Standing has really no concrete existence, that it is a 
purely accidental relation between quantities, that the 
greater or smaller amount of the quantities sacrificed 
in the attempt to attain it is absolutely without effect, 
— in short, that the whole pursuit is a delusion. We 
have also seen that the propagation of this delusion 
from the rich through the other strata of society 
greatly increases the area of its operation and the 
amount of harm which it accomplishes. It of course 
follows that to apply charitable funds to such pur- 
poses not only does not benefit society, but deeply 



84 THE WORLD'S CHARITABLE LIST. Book II. 

injures it; and that therefore it is a most unfor- 
tunate and reprehensible use of such funds. Fur- 
thermore, the occupation of zealously devoting time 
and money to a harmful delusion necessarily 
affects harmfully the character of its devotees, 
impairs their ability and weakens their desire to 
do anything of serious value, puts them entirely 
out of touch with all sane and reasonable ideals 
and views of life, and makes it practically impos- 
sible for them to help themselves. It is, in short, 
the typical, the ideal method of producing pauper- 
ism; in its track we find a continuous trail of economic 
corpses, while almost every vestige of the spirit of 
real self-help has vanished. 

But far short of such colossal waste and such utter 
perversion of ideals we find on the upper reaches of the 
World's Charitable List much that is as truly pau- 
perism in its inner reality as are the failures of Mrs. 
B.'s list. Wealth that simply places its owners in a 
charmed circle of refined luxury, where they are 
sheltered from every rude breath of wind that blows 
from life's tumultuous ocean, and where the world's 
trumpet-call for real deeds is never allowed to pene- 
trate, — such wealth may breed delicacy, fastidious- 
ness, refinement, gentleness; but it is not help to self- 
help. It does not tend to nerve one for conflict, or 
even for effort, but on the contrary seduces him into 
a life of lotus-eating. Its effects are often charming 
to the casual beholder; but when we look at their 
cost, and think upon the sore need for a part of these 
unearned millions in quarters where they would be 
used as seed-grain, we cannot doubt that such graces 
are too dearly bought. Such charitable expenditure 



Chap. vm. THE MAJOR CHARITIES. 85 

could never justify itself upon Mrs. B.'s list, and it 
follows that it cannot be really justified by merely 
belonging to a different stratum of society. For 
large charity, like small charitable gifts, can only 
finally justify itself by benefiting alike its recipients 
and society, and in a degree commensurate with the 
magnitude of its gifts. 



It evidently seems, to one not of the gilded circle, 
an awe-inspiring, dare-devil adventure to attempt 
critically to investigate the rich. All instances of 
attempts at serious and reasonable investigation 
which we remember were open to the criticism that 
they were, so to speak, not quantitative, but qualita- 
tive, — that they considered the question settled to the 
advantage of the Millionaires when they had dis- 
covered undoubted benefit from their wealth, even if 
the benefit were small and the wealth large. 

We start with exactly the opposite idea. The gift 
of ten talents seems to us to demand the gain of 
another ten, just as reasonably as the gift of two 
demands the gain of another two. The Millionaire- 
by-inheritance should show fruits commensurate 
with his millions; Mrs. B.'s two-dollars-a-week pen- 
sioner should show fruits worthy of his two dollars 
a week. Yet many who would closely and critically 
scan the fruits of a small dole of money given to a 
poor laborer, would accept any small scrap of benefit 
from a Millionaire's inherited fortune as proof 
positive of its beneficence and the wisdom of the 
social arrangements which placed it in his hands. 
Special pleading has ever been most freely used in 



80 THE WORLD'S CHARITABLE LIST. Book n. 

the defence of riches — for wealth has been on the 
defensive time out of mind. 

There are many instances of credit claimed for the 
rich by their apologists where absolutely no credit is 
deserved, — where the whole claim rests on a fallacy. 
For instance, we are all familiar with the saying: 
" The extravagance of the rich gives work to the poor 
and makes money circulate." Such a fact is abso- 
lutely without significance from the standpoint of our 
investigation. Any way of spending money, good, 
bad, or indifferent, — to buy masses for the repose of 
a soul, to send missionaries to the heathen, or to bribe 
a jury, — puts money in circulation and causes work 
to be done. If money is to be spent, these things 
will infallibly follow, whether the person spending it 
wish it to be so or not. He is not entitled to credit, 
any more than he is rightly to be blamed, for what he 
does not cause and cannot help. The only possible 
merit attached to the spending of money is in devot- 
ing it to noble ends. But further, as a matter of fact, 
even the poor merit of employing labor and making 
money circulate belongs in the least possible degree 
to wasteful expenditure. Money spent in display or 
other form of waste is gone in the first spending; the 
wealth which it represented is utterly destroyed, and 
will never again give work to the poor (or anyone 
else) or make other money circulate. But money 
spent productively breeds other wealth to replace that 
consumed, and thus may cause money to circulate 
and labor to be employed indefinitely. 

Scarcely less in the nature of special pleading is the 
following attitude : " The poor men who have profited 
by Miss S.'s munificent gift to the Hospital 



Chap. vm. THE MAJOR CHARITIES. 87 

will not be likely to listen patiently to the next dema- 
gogue who tries to ' roast ' the Millionaires." That 
is to say, in substance : " When one has received a 
benefit from a Millionaire's fortune it would be 
despicable beyond measure to look any further into 
his use of it." The World must prostrate herself in 
humble thankfulness at receiving back benefits worth 
a thousand dollars from her charitable gift of ten 
millions. The following out of this rule to its logical 
conclusion would serve notice on each Millionaire that 
his first generous deed would canonize him; that 
thenceforth he need fear no criticism, be his use of his 
riches never so reprehensible. 

In contrast to all these methods of avoiding the 
whole truth we have simply tried to consider fairly 
and with reasonable fulness both sides of the account 
with our Millionaires-by-charity, and to set down the 
credits as credits and the debits as debits. We have 
found and duly acknowledged numerous and import- 
ant credits: — the noble public and humanitarian ser- 
vices of some rich men, the immense and nobly-con- 
ceived gifts of others, the honorable business activity 
of a third group, the important services to the art of 
refined living rendered by still others of the class. All 
these, with others of less importance not specifically 
considered, make up a most impressive list of benefits 
for which the World must acknowledge her indebted- 
ness to the Millionaires. 

But no man is rich simply because his assets are 
imposing. What of his liabilities? The list of debits 
which we find ourselves compelled to register against 
our class of the ultra-rich-by-charity is also terribly 
impressive. The amount of wealth which they hold 



88 THE WORLD'S CHARITABLE LIST. Book II. 

but never earned is enormous; with all this we must 
debit them. Used as seed-grain by the Minor 
Charities it might have lifted our whole class of the 
very poor to the plane of hopeful and self-helpful 
effort. Their opportunities for noble work for 
humanity are inspiring in their vastness; with limit- 
less means of preparation at their command and no 
burdens of daily bread-winning to distract their atten- 
tion from nobler ideals, we might almost hope to see 
a new heaven and a new earth won by their labors. 
Such princely opportunities confer solemn obliga- 
tions; they are a heavy debit on the World's account 
against the Millionaires. It is against this tre- 
mendous array of benefits received that we must 
weigh the contributions of the Millionaires to the 
World's welfare. 

But yet more must go down on this heavy debit 
account — the Millionaires' sins of commission. 
Much of the fruit they have brought forth as the re- 
sult of their unparalleled opportunities is not merely 
negative, or insignificant, but seriously harmful. 
They have, many of them, scorned and ridiculed 
earnest effort, while they have pursued and praised 
idle pleasure; they have madly sacrificed to cruel and 
delusive social deities, and have spread the madness 
down through society; they have elected to seek after 
and eat of Dead Sea fruit, and its bitter taste is still 
in the mouths of those who looked to them for guid- 
ance. And, perhaps worst of all, they have shown us 
pauperism on so grand a scale and with such glitter- 
ing accessories of pomp and circumstance that many 
of our young men and young women waste their 



Chap. viii. THE MAJOR CHARITIES. 89 

working hours dreaming of its glory, and sighing that 
they were not born paupers. 

Looking at the whole case, at both sides of the 
account, we cannot see how anyone can seriously 
maintain that the very rich have given a good account 
of their stewardship. They have done some noble 
things, and in some ways have served society well ; 
but all these benefits are trivial compared with their 
resources and opportunities. Judged by the standard 
they would apply to the poor they are as a class disas- 
trous failures, and the charitable funds in their hands 
are being grievously misused. Vast service to hu- 
manity would be accomplished by reclaiming from 
their unworthy possession the seed-grain which is 
marked for this unholy sacrifice to Display, and 
re-dedicating it to the service of the race. 

But in seeking to extirpate pauperism we must 
never empty the vials of our wrath on the victim 
alone, or let the discovery of his unworthiness blind 
us to the ultimate causes. The real culprit may 
very well be, and usually is, not the pauperized, but 
the pauperize!*! When we come to look into it 
we may find that it is Mrs. B., and not her protege, 
who has caused his fall, — -that in giving him the 
jioney without any accompanying sense of respon- 
sibility she has practically counseled a waste of seed- 
grain. And this is even more true as an extenuation 
of the follies committed by our paupers in high life, 
for the World not only permits but applauds the sacri- 
fices of seed-grain in the temple of Display, and her 
beneficiaries can hardly be expected as a class to rise 
superior to her morality. We are all more or less 



90 THE WORLD S CHARITABLE LIST. Book II. 

prisoners of our circumstances, and the constraint of 
great wealth is not less rigid, though doubtless less 
painful, than the constraint of bitter poverty. But in 
either case it takes a hero to rise above his circum- 
stances. 

Let us therefore honor those Millionaires who have 
refused to be pauperized by their environment as not 
less worthy than those denizens of the Inferno who 
have been likewise strong. And for the victims, both 
high and low, let us have gospel charity and pity, 
knowing that they have been more sinned against than 
sinning. And for the bitter stream of evil which flows 
from this monstrous perversion to desolate the outer- 
most borders of society, let us straitly charge the 
World as the criminal, and seek to prevail with her 
to mend her ways. 



CHAPTER IX. 

KEVIEW. WHAT WE SEEK : WHAT WE HAVE SEEN". 

We have now completed a general survey of the 
World's Charitable List. We have passed in review 
many facts which have an important bearing on the 
leading social questions of the times, and have drawn 
some inferences which, if just, cannot safely be 
ignored in treating our social problems. 

Let us now pause a moment to review the field of 
our survey and the path by which we have come, and 
to estimate the significance of our findings of fact 
and our conclusions. 



The prime concern of the economic literature of 
our day is what we may call the search for the Beast. 

We know not the name or the number, the horns 
or the hoofs of our economic Beast. We only know 
its baleful influence and the withering blight which 
its breath casts over society. The students of social 
science know it as the astronomers first knew of Nep- 
tune, — by the perturbing influences with which it has 
confounded their calculations. It has caused us to 
gather thorns from grape-vines and thistles from fig- 
trees; it has grafted a bud of the upas-tree upon the 
sturdy stock of industry. Under its malign guidance 
the fair science of wealth, whose words should be 
powerful for the healing of the nations, has brought 

91 



92 THE WORLD'S CHARITABLE LIST. Book II. 

forth only a Sphynx's riddle. Out of a plenteous 
world, brought by marvels of energy and inventive 
genius under man's dominion, it has grown the 
bitter fruits of poverty and despair, burning hatred 
and endless strife, reeking slums and foul diseases. 

Of course there are not lacking economists who 
say they can see no signs of a Beast. " To be sure," 
these say, "there will be occasionally some trouble; 
some fellow will get drunk and waste his money, and 
his family will suffer. But that is nobody's fault but 
his own. Society can't make all men rich or wise. 
Overlooking cases of misfortune, however, our present 
social regime shows excellent results, and while it 
may be open to improvement in details, it could not 
possibly be seriously changed without bringing uni- 
versal disaster. These plans of reform are silly 
dreams." 

All of which we receive with deference: it may be 
true. The apparent wrongs which we have been 
watching may be only misfortunes. But so long as 
such misfortunes are as plenty as they now are, some 
ardent souls will continue to believe in the existence 
of the Beast. And with belief in its existence, the 
quest for its lair is likely to remain the uppermost 
thought of the knight-errants of economics. To find 
it and kill it seems to them to be the first duty of 
this generation. This clone the sun would shine and 
the flowers bloom for all mankind ; we should have 
a new earth and a new hope of heaven. 

We also aspire to join in the search. This book 
of ours is in a modest way a quest after the Beast. 
It essays to find within its chosen field the evil which 
has multiplied upon the poor the burden of wrongs 



Chap. ix. REVIEW. 93 

and privations, and embittered for the rich the pos- 
session of wealth and power. 

A few words may serve to show more clearly the 
reason for our choice of the field in which we have 
elected to pursue the search. 

In the beginning of our investigation we dis- 
claimed any intention of inquiring into the wisdom 
or unwisdom of a man's use of money which he had 
himself earned. This was not because we believed 
there was nothing in such a sphere of inquiry to 
repay investigation, but because we thought the facts 
of cardinal importance we were seeking, — the lair of 
the Beast, — lay elsewhere. 

A man's right to the use of the wealth he has 
fairly earned is the foundation-stone of our present 
social system. It flows logically from the simple 
admission that a man owns himself : — but this is 
largely denied nowadays. It furnishes the only ade- 
quate justification for the existence of private 
property. If the creator of wealth have no just title 
to its possession, our social system is a mass of contra- 
dictions and absurdities. 

Now we doubt not that important mistakes and 
wrongs are committed in the use of such money. If 
these mistakes and wrongs are the main cause of the 
great mass of misery and unrighteousness which 
exists in our social system,— are really the Beast 
which we seek, — then evidently the abolition of 
private property and the adoption of a socialistic 
organization of industry is the only way that offers 
real hope for society. 

Far be it from us to refuse to accept any con- 



94 THE WORLD'S CHARITABLE LIST. Book II. 

elusion to which the logic of facts brings us. If 
the facts point to socialism, let us say so frankly and 
earnestly. But let us first be sure that the facts 
point unmistakably. The present competitive system 
has the tremendous advantage of being in possession 
of the field, and is entitled to the benefit of whatever 
doubt exists. It can only be dispossessed by evi- 
dence, not that it is faulty, merely, for all human 
systems are necessarily faulty, but that it is wrong in 
its essence. 

Now evidence of this character we believe is 
lacking. The socialistic propaganda of the present 
day bases its powerful and acute attack upon com- 
petitive institutions upon a pure assumption of this 
vital point. It has no difficulty in showing that the 
evils of the present system are tremendous. This is 
its major premise. If it could prove that the evils of 
the present system are a necessary result of its essential 
principle it would establish its minor premise. The 
conclusion would then necessarily follow that to be 
freed from the evils of our present system it would 
be necessary to abolish its essential principle — com- 
petition. 

But no attempt is made to prove the minor premise. 
The syllogism of the socialists reads somewhat like 
this : 

The evils of the present system are tremendous. 

Of course the evils of the present system are a 
necessary result of its essential principle, — com- 
petition. 

Therefore, the only way to be freed from the evils 
of our present system is to abolish competition. 



Chap. ix. REVIEW. 95 

Now we believe that it is at this precise point in 
the socialists' argument that the average man halts 
to consider. We believe public opinion is fully with 
the socialists in their exposition of the enormities of 
our present social organization. We believe that it 
would unhesitatingly follow them in demanding the 
abolition of competition if convinced that no other 
way offered any reasonable hope of relief. But we 
believe that it is skeptical and hesitating as to the 
above-mentioned minor premise, and shows small 
tendency to accept the socialists' " of course " as con- 
clusive. 

But it is equally true that no really confident 
answer is being opposed by any representative body 
of public opinion to the socialists' " of course." So 
far as we can judge, public opinion very fervently 
believes that there ought to be some way of reforming 
manifest and tremendous wrongs without throwing 
all our social institutions into the crucible ; it is rather 
inclined to think there is some way ; but the 
socialists' confident challenge to point out such a way 
only elicits a confused murmur of voices. The 
socialists' confidence seems to give them command of 
the situation, but public opinion is not convinced, — 
only " thinking." 

The various voices which compose the murmur — 
the various answers which are being propounded on 
every hand to the question, What shall we do to be 
saved (socially) ? — are evidently, excepting that of 
the socialists, kept in check by a strong sense of their 
own inadequacy. Each set of reformers is sufficiently 
sure of the rightfulness of its own reform, but quails 
when it is asked to apply (in imagination) its little 



96 THE WORLD'S CHARITABLE LIST. Book II. 

palliative to the tremendous range of evil to be cured. 
A few of these plans are believed by their originators 
and upholders to be able to affect the whole range of 
society with an upward-tending influence, but very 
few even claim so much as this, and a very cursory 
inspection of those most prominently in the public 
eye will convince the impartial observer that the 
remedies offered are, almost without exception, local, 
not constitutional. 

Our body politic and social is thus seen to be in 
the position of a very sick man who is being torn by 
the conflicting counsels of two sets of advisers. On 
the one hand is a surgeon who confidently assures him 
that amputation at the waist-line is the only real 
remedy open to him. On the other is a crowd of 
doctors each yearning to try the virtues of court- 
plaster on some portion of his anatomy. We may 
reasonably feel justified in seeking to stay the sur- 
geon's knife in favor of some milder remedy ; yet 
we cannot fail to see that it is some powerful con- 
stitutional tonic that is needed, and not court-plaster. 

Our determination, therefore, to leave out of our 
present investigation the evils resulting from the use 
of wealth by its creators, amounts only to this: — that 
in our search for the root of the tremendous evils 
afflicting society, — in our quest for the lair of the 
Beast, — we decide to begin with the incidentals, not 
the essence, of our present competitive system, just 
as we should seek to cure our patient by regulating 
his bodily functions and not by sacrificing his motive 
power. We believe that our present competitive 
system must at no very distant date be purged of its 
worst evils, and that if those evils can be definitely 



Chap. is. REVIEW. 97 

traced to the necessary action of competition, it will 
be reformed by abolition. But we also believe that 
the principle of competition can only be totally con- 
demned by a decisive failure to locate the evils in 
question as belonging to the incidentals of the com- 
petitive system rather than to its essence. 

The essential principle of our present system is, by 
common consent, competition. In fact many bulky 
works on themes of political economy may be read 
through without the reader being apprised of any 
important exceptions to its supremacy. But without 
asserting that the exceptions are more important than 
the rule we may safely say that it is only a caricature 
of our present social system which treats it as a system 
purely competitive. 

These exceptions we may broadly divide into two 
classes, those of Extortion and those of Charity. The 
first consists of those cases in which the action of 
free competition is suspended by some advantage of 
position or opportunity held by certain persons. The 
second consists of those cases in which its action is 
suspended by pure favoritism, the person who holds 
a competitive advantage surrendering it to some other 
person without receiving any economic equivalent. 

The first class embraces all such forms of non- 
competitive money-making action as trusts and legal 
or legislative monopolies. The public thoroughly 
appreciates the fact that this class forms an important 
reservation from the working of competition. It 
constitutes the present storm-centre of politico-social 
discussion. It has received ample attention in current 
literature from both friends and enemies — especially 



98 THE WORLD'S CHARITABLE LIST. Book II. 

the latter. Their attacks upon its various methods of 
eluding competition are most pertinacious, and seem 
to receive hearty support from public opinion. The 
party of reformers which represents these attacks 
proclaims as its essential belief that the present danger 
to society is preeminently from these monopolistic 
exceptions to the principle of competition, and we are 
left to infer that if untrammeled competition could 
be restored " Time would run back and fetch the age 
of gold." 

Yet trusts and monopolies are not by any means 
such wide departures from the competitive principle 
as their enemies believe and assert. They are more 
a special development of competition than a negation 
of it. While corruption is often at the root of their 
power, yet it is also true that the vantage-ground 
from which they levy tribute on the public is often 
simply due to energy, effort, management, foresight, 
resolution, knowledge of human nature, and other 
qualities most highly commendable from an econ- 
omic standpoint. Monopolies do undoubtedly often 
operate at the expense of the public, but so do many 
of the forms of business activity which public opinion 
still considers as exhaling the odor of sanctity. On 
the other hand monopolies are often highly beneficial 
to the public by reason of the greater efficiency in 
production and distribution which they are enabled 
to attain; and much of the outcry against them is of 
the same nature as the outcry of workmen against 
labor-saving machinery. It would be extremely 
difficult to draw a line clearly distinguishing 
between these much - reprobated institutions and 
similar forms of " legitimate " business. While 



Chap. ix. REVIEW. 99 

we have no desire to underrate the evil that 
flows from monopoly in these various forms, we may 
say in passing that it is the middle class who are the 
principal sufferers from their operations. We very 
much doubt if the abolition of every commercial 
monopoly in existence would produce any great 
change in the relative position of the very poor and 
the very rich. 

The exceptions to the operation of the principle of 
competition which come under the head of Charity 
seem to have been severely neglected by the reformers. 
We do not remember to have seen in any work 
treating of these subjects even a sentence or a para- 
graph, much less a chapter or a division, which 
evidenced any adequate conception of their magni- 
tude or importance. This is, of course, to some ex- 
tent due to the fact that a conventional limitation 
has been placed on the word " charity " which has 
helped to conceal the magnitude of the thing itself. 
The charity which has always monopolized the name, 
while in itself important, and treated in its special 
literature with a fulness which does full honor to its 
importance, is yet utterly insignificant beside the real 
Charity, — the widespread and immense benefactions 
of what we have called the World's Charitable List. 
This whole and undivided Charity we believe to be 
the most important subject in economic literature, — 
the principle of competition, with its attendant insti- 
tution of private property, alone excepted. 

This subject of the greater Charity we have chosen 
as the field in which to pursue our quest. AH lines 
of a priori reasoning on the subject point to this as 
a most promising field for us. 



100 THE WORLD'S CHARITABLE LIST. Book II. 

In the first place, it is a distinct negation of the 
principle of competition. For those reformers who, 
though driven to admit the faults of competition, yet 
find themselves unable to picture the productive 
machinery of the world as operating without it — (and 
we think even the socialists must sometimes wish they 
were at liberty to use it in imagining their recon- 
structed society) — this fact must have great weight. 
A field of such magnitude and importance entirely 
removed from the regulating influence of competition 
must, to such a one, irresistibly suggest the lair of the 
Beast. 

In the second place, its magnitude and its intimate 
connection with every social activity make it an ade- 
quate field in which to trace a great evil or to apply 
a radical remedy. We are asked to place our faith 
in Trades-Unionism, or Profit-Sharing, or the Free 
Coinage of Silver, or Currency Reform, or a Protec- 
tive Tariff, or Free Trade. We may easily concede 
that each of these movements seeks a beneficial end, 
even if no one man could possibly endorse the methods 
of all. Yet granting in imagination that all which 
these hope to achieve is accomplished, how much is 
the face of society altered ? how much are hopeless 
poverty and excessive riches moderated ? how near 
are we brought to a sane and hopeful outlook on life 
for all mankind ? The utmost that one of these 
movements can hope to accomplish is to cure a few 
of the abuses existing in society, — to lop off a limb or 
two of the Beast. But the Beast is one of those low 
forms of life which possess the power of replacing a 
lost member; the abuse will be only too likely to 
grow again, perhaps slightly altered in form, if the 



Chap. ix. REVIEW. 101 

Beast be allowed to live. Our quest is not merely for 
members of the Beast; we seek his life. And we 
believe the field we have chosen for our search is 
sufficiently extensive to exhibit (or hide) every rami- 
fication in which his repulsive life-force works its 
varied evils. 

Finally it is a promising field in which to pursue our 
search because it is virgin territory for the investi- 
gator. If the Beast really be in hiding here we must 
admire the astuteness with which he has thrown his 
pursuers off his track. The conventional limitation 
of the word " charity " to the insignificant charities 
has made his hiding-place safer than a fortress. It 
is now " bad form " to investigate the field of charity, 
— the real charities. The conventional field of charity 
is of course investigated by the economists, no doubt 
at the suggestion of the Beast himself, and much in- 
teresting information is unearthed ; but due deference 
is paid to the feelings of the Beast, and nothing is 
done to compromise him. Of course no gentleman 
investigator would discover the Beast in the innermost 
recesses of polite society, and even if he be discovered 
there he must naturally be treated like a gentleman. 
In short, the investigator of the field of charity has 
been swathed to utter impotence in the bonds of polite 
convention. 

All of which makes it likely that this field is 
one of great promise for a rude, boorish, ungentle- 
manly searcher after the presence or the footprints of 
the Beast. We make no doubt that we have fully 
established our possession of these qualifications. Let 
us now briefly review the course of our investigation. 



102 THE WORLD'S CHARITABLE LIST. Book II. 

Our first attention was given to the Minor, or small, 
charities. A large part of these belong to the con- 
ventional charities, which, as we have said, have been 
abundantly investigated by the economists. The 
general verdict of the economists, — or rather the 
general judgment based on the verdict of the econ- 
omists, — was that these charities had very largely 
been unfortunate in their effects, pauperizing instead 
of helping the recipients. More caution was recom- 
mended in the bestowal of charitable gifts; in general, 
a considerable curtailment in the amounts given. A 
not inadequate summary of the popular acceptation 
of their verdict would be, " Pauperizing by excessive 
giving." 

On applying a little analysis to this verdict and the 
facts supporting it, we found ourselves indeed unable 
to deny the pauperizing. But taking the strictly 
parallel cases of much larger gifts from the World's 
Charitable List, we found strong reason to infer that 
the pauperizing effect traceable to the Minor 
Charities was not due to their excessive amount. On 
the other hand, by analyzing the way in which a 
charitable gift must operate to be a real benefit in- 
stead of a detriment, we very soon discovered that one 
necessary element was at least a small surplus over the 
amount necessary to overcome starvation. But this 
surplus is in general carefully excluded from the gifts 
of the Charity of Condescension. Evidently, then, 
the rigid smallness of the gifts from these charities is 
an important pauperizing influence. Our general 
inference therefore was that the Minor Charities in 
the main pauperize by withholding, not by excessive 
giving. 



Chap. k. REVIEW. 103 

Our survey of the field of the Minor Charities of 
Equality confirmed this conclusion. The help 
afforded the children by their parents among the very 
poor yet self-supporting classes, — their education, 
training and start in life, — we found to be so inade- 
quate as to force the children into bread-winning 
occupations almost in infancy, and in reality utterly 
unprepared for the fight of life. The result of this 
we found to be almost necessarily a life-long struggle 
with starvation, — a struggle practically hopeless, in 
which few could reasonably expect any noteworthy 
success. The sick, wounded and disabled of this 
perennially-beaten army, falling by the wayside, 
become the material which the Charity of Condescen- 
sion, by its penny-thrift and pound-waste, converts 
into paupers. Thus the terrible scantiness of the 
Charity of Equality among the very poor is the real 
reason so many of them ultimately fall into the ranks 
of the paupers. This is preparation for pauperizing, 
and it is wrought by the withholding forced upon the 
parents by their destitute circumstances. 

But passing to a more cheerful field of investiga- 
tion, we found a very different state of affairs existing 
among the beneficiaries of the Medium Charities. In 
the first place, the educational charities, belonging to 
this division, while perplexing in point of classifica- 
tion, are most cheering in the matter of results. They 
furnish large help in the way of preparation for the 
struggle of life, and give it in a shape which makes 
impossible any other use of it. They greatly benefit; 
they never pauperize. Then, in this class the help 
afforded the children by the parents is usually ade- 
quate to give them some real fighting chance in the 



104 THE WORLD'S CHARITABLE LIST. Book n. 

battle of life, and is often sufficient to give them the 
best chance the mind of man can devise. For, on the 
other hand, it is rarely so large as to lead them to rely 
upon it alone; — they know they must strenuously 
exert themselves in order to reach any really honor- 
able success. Thus in this class we find almost every- 
body engaged in serious and useful work, with a hope- 
ful outlook, and expanding ideals. We find a con- 
stant endeavor to use the good in hand productively, 
to compass the possession of some greater good; a 
general habit of looking before and after; a large 
development of the power to adapt means to ends. 
The middle class, — the class of the Medium Charities, 
— is the typical class of our modern civilization, the 
strength and glory of our competitive system. That 
this is so is certainly due in the main to the large yet 
not excessive charity which is dispensed in this class; 
■ — the funds which furnish to the young the education 
and training necessary to enable them to work 
effectively. 

But passing again from this class to that of the 
very rich, — from the Medium to the Major Charities, 
— we find again a land of desolation. It is not 
usually so considered, to be sure; — the casual on- 
looker amid these rich scenes thinks he has found a 
land of peace and plenty. Yet a battlefield, a ship- 
wreck, a tornado, a fire which lays a city in ruins, 
are, to the serious observer, less awful scenes of waste 
and desolation than the circles where measureless 
seed-grain is consumed on the altar of Display. The 
charities among this class are adequate, to be sure, 
for all possible needs ; they place in the hands of their 
beneficiaries possibilities which are simply immeas- 



Chap. k. REVIEW. 105 

urable. We cannot overlook the fact that many of 
these possibilities are realized; that much of the seed- 
grain among the rich is planted and brings forth a 
bounteous harvest; that beautiful oases of living ver- 
dure relieve the aspect of our land of desolation. Yet 
the utilized seed-grain, the realized harvest, while 
large in themselves, are an utterly insignificant 
fraction of the seed-grain at command, the harvest 
that might have been. The bulk of the inherited 
millions which these very rich hold is sacrificed to a 
visionary deity; the main part of the energy which 
might have fructified these millions is spent in build- 
ing houses of cards constructed on fantastic principles 
of perverse impossibility. The main fruit of these 
wasted millions is a glittering and gorgeous pauper- 
ism, a nerveless and cynical satiety, an inverted and 
perverted set of ideals. 

We wish to make every reasonable acknowledgment 
of the imperfections of our general survey of these 
fields. The exceptions in matters of detail which 
might be scored against our generalizations are of 
course numerous. In particular the evil of expendi- 
ture for Display, which we have ascribed to the very 
rich, is, as every one knows, rampant among large por- 
tions of the middle class, and if it is anywhere, or in 
any class, entirely lacking, we do not know of it. 
Yet it is distinctively a vice of the very rich. Its 
existence there is natural, and is due to a surplus of 
means after all real needs are satisfied. On the other 
hand, among the other classes its existence is largely 
due to a desire to imitate the very rich, or those richer 
than themselves; and it is largely kept alive by the 



100 THE WORLD'S CHARITABLE LIST. Book II. 

imaginary glories of the temple of Display where the 
rich sacrifice their seed-grain. 

But passing over the details, in which of course we 
do not claim infallibility, we think that no reasonable 
person can well dispute the general correctness of onr 
survey. That Charity — (using the word in its fuller 
sense) — is disastrously inadequate among the poor, 
disastrously in excess among the rich ; that the injury 
which each condition works is not alone an injury to 
society, but to the individuals concerned; that these 
individuals at both ends of the social scale, as well as 
society in general, would immeasurably benefit by a 
more even distribution of the existing charitable 
funds: — these are conclusions for which we should 
hope to secure general assent. "We think, also, that 
those who have followed us through our investigation 
will generally agree that we have not overdrawn the 
amount and intensity of the injury worked by this 
double perversion ; — that we have shown strong if not 
unmistakable evidence that we are here dealing with 
the Beast of our quest. 

To deny charity where it is greatly needed in order 
to bestow it where it is worse than superfluous, — to 
work deadly injury by withholding at one end of the 
social scale, in order to be enabled to work deadlier 
injury by excess at the other: — this is a settled habit 
of the World. It is a spectacle too common to possess 
any terrors for us; we witness its exhibition each day 
without emotion. Yet if we look closely and intently 
at this familiar sight we see that it contains in plain 
view the lineaments of the Beast, breathing desolation 
and despair over a world which its Creator planted 
thick with tokens of good-will to all mankind. 



CHAPTER X. 

WHENCE COMETH HELP? 

It is with a chastened spirit that we turn to the task 
of outlining a remedy for the disease that we have 
located. We all know how easy is criticism, how diffi- 
cult real construction or reconstruction. 

Yet it might seem that the nature of the disease 
as we have stated it is also a statement of the remedy. 
If the disease be simply a superfluity of charitable 
funds in one class of society and a corresponding 
deficiency in another the remedy is evidently to take 
the superfluity and apply it to the deficiency, thus 
abolishing both and making everything lovely. 

As a matter of fact, we believe that such is exact- 
ly the remedy needed. Yet of course this bare state- 
ment is absolutely valueless. Everybody will recog- 
nize that any such short cut to our objective point is 
impossible. It may sound very simple to say that 
if there be a malignant tumor in a man's stomach, the 
proper remedy is to cut it out. The surgeon, how- 
ever, knows that at every stroke of his blade he must 
carefully observe the tissues in his path, avoiding this 
one to the right and that one to the left, taking a 
course which may to the uninitiated seem straight and 
easy, but which he knows is devious and difficult. He 
is dealing with a living organism. Every nerve and 
blood-vessel, bone and membrane, has its function to 
perform in the economy of the human body, and 
surgery which is to cure or benefit must respect each 

107 



108 THE WORLD'S CHARITABLE LIST. Book n. 

and all of these, — must carefully avoid destroying the 
functional usefulness of the members in its endeavor 
to reach and cure the diseased part. To slash straight 
for the tumor, regardless of the living tissues inter- 
vening, is butchery, not surgery. 

We find ourselves similarly restricted in our efforts 
to provide a cure for the ills of society. We are deal- 
ing with a living organism. To cut and slash into its 
existing institutions in order to reach and cure some 
deep-seated disease is impossible. The parts of the 
social organism intervening may seem to us simply 
obstructions to our beneficent plans, but each one has 
its function to perform. Any remedy we offer must 
respect each and all of them, and carefully avoid any 
injury to their functional activity, or we should be 
simply proposing social butchery. 

This principle may seem to restrict the sphere of 
social and political reform almost to the vanishing 
point. In truth the parallel, while legitimate to a 
certain point, is, like all other parallels of the sort, 
capable of being carried too far. The social and 
political reformer is not, like the physician, absolutely 
restricted to acting upon the organs and members 
already existing. Some of the institutions that go to 
make up our present social organization are as truly 
man's handiwork as is a locomotive. Many of them 
also have been greatly modified and amended by hu- 
man design. Yet despite this large sphere for man's 
conscious work in the upbuilding of our social struc- 
ture, the process on the whole is a development. When 
we find an institution existing we may be almost cer- 
tain that it is performing some needed function more 
or less satisfactorily. We are not necessarily with- 



Chap. x. WHENCE COMETH HELP ? 109 

held from making changes in the institution, or from 
substituting another in its stead, but we must provide 
for the discharge of the function. Whatever changes 
we would make must include provision for the orderly 
continuance of the life of the social organism; and 
hence they must of course be changes in the direction 
of its natural development. In fact, we may say that 
the true work of the social reformer is rather an accel- 
eration of the natural course of development than an 
introduction of any foreign force or idea. 

Our inquiry then as to the upper portion of the 
World's Charitable List, whose surplus funds we 
would so much like to apply to the Minor Charities, 
is, Do these vast funds, and the system which brings 
about their existence, perform any necessary function 
in our present social organism? Would their aboli- 
tion be a wound in the vitals of society? 

The answer to this question must be affirmative. 
The existence and inheritance of these vast funds is, 
as matters now stand, part and parcel of our social 
system, and not to be lightly separated from it. They 
grow, in practice, from the duty under which men of 
our day feel that they labor to provide for their 
families, not only to a reasonable extent, but to the 
utmost extent possible. And the depth and intensity 
of this feeling, and the unreasonable length to which 
its manifestation is pushed, are due to the existence of 
another institution that is now part and parcel of our 
social system, and not easily to be separated from it: 
— the terrible Inferno which we maintain at the bot- 
tom of our social system — the Submerged Classes. 

Few even of those who are entirely familiar with 
it realize the extent to which the dread of this awful 



110 THE WORLD'S CHARITABLE LIST. Book II. 

pit affects society. For all society is built, as it were, 
upon the face of a steep cliff overhanging this pit, 
and each of its members maintains his position at a 
certain height from the bottom by virtue of some 
special foothold which he has cut in the cliff. The 
sight of the torments endured by those in the pit is 
much lauded by some economic writers as a whole- 
some spur to the diligence of the more fortunate mem- 
bers of society, — those who have fairly good ledges 
to stand on, and are working to deepen their footholds 
in the face of the rock, and to climb higher up the 
cliff. But other writers express considerable doubt 
as to the beneficial effects of this spur. Some persons 
who have worked very near the bottom of the cliff, 
and have by strenuous exertion climbed higher, say 
that they can do better work at a greater altitude, 
where the dread of a fall into the seething horrors of 
the pit is not so overpowering. Then the cliff slopes 
less steeply further up, the ledges are broader and 
seem more like permanent dwelling-places, and the 
prospect is so wide that one can sometimes forget the 
existence of the pit. But there is no place so lofty 
and no ledge so wide that the dwellers are safe from 
a fall which may take them clear to the bottom of the 
precipice, and plunge them into the horrors of ex- 
treme poverty. 

Naturally with society so placed around and above 
the pit, the leading motive of its members is a desire 
to escape from the suffering there exhibited. This 
end is pursued with a lifelong ardor and intensity 
which sometimes seem to develop into a form of in- 
sanity. In fact, the whole scene of struggle is some- 
what irrational. The fear of the pit is so overpower- 



Chap. x. WHENCE COMETH HELP ? Ill 

ing that it makes a mob of the desperate army of 
climbers. It seems impossible to institute concerted 
action among them. Could they with one accord 
attack the terrors of the pit they might abolish them 
with a tithe of the effort they now devote to selfish 
and individual flight. But calm reason, of course, 
is not to be expected of a mob; they pay no attention 
to attempting to improve the conditions in the 
Inferno. In fact, by elbowing each other as they 
climb, many are unnecessarily jostled off their ledges 
to make still worse the struggling, hopeless press in 
the pit. And this habit of feverish effort, each fo? 
himself, and in disregard of his neighbor's welfare, is 
maintained even after the remotest possible necessity 
for it has ceased. When success is attained, and a 
relaxation from the strain comes to be possible, the 
toilers find that they cannot lay the habit aside. Each 
keeps on striving to make the ledge for his family 
wider, the refuge safer, until they overdo the matter. 
In the end they make the ledges so wide that their 
children never get near the edge to see the pit below, 
and when their parents' protecting care is gone they 
often stray over the edge in pure ignorance of the 
danger. 

Thus in the minds of these cliff-dwellers the idea 
of escaping, and especially of enabling their families 
to escape, far from the terrors of the Inferno has 
become a sort of religion. The motive serves to 
justify not merely the first attempts to climb upward 
from the pit, but the most elaborate precautions to 
provide for their families security and splendor for- 
ever, — precautions which often by their excess defeat 
their intended ends. The intensity of the primary 



112 THE WORLD'S CHARITABLE LIST. Book II. 

motive, the hideousness of the Inferno which always 
threatens them, makes ample provision seem small, and 
the greatest excess but moderate prudence. The 
poverty of the pit comes to stand for the essence of 
evil; it seems impossible to have too much of the 
remedy for it. 

Thus the funds which we should so much like to 
distribute differently are protected from our designs 
by a sacred name. They have a necessary function 
as things now stand, but it is largely to serve as an 
imaginary protection against a danger which the sys- 
tem itself creates. They stand in the public eye, 
however, as monuments of devotion to duty, — the 
duty which lies upon a man to provide for his family. 
To propose their abolition would arouse almost uni- 
versal protest. Of course we do not wish to abolish 
these funds, but only to distribute them more 
effectively; we do not wish to abolish provision for 
one's family, but to provide for all families mod- 
erately, and for none to tremendous excess. But this 
is an experiment: to each man who has spent a life- 
time of toil gathering a scanty provision for his 
family, such a redistribution would seem like risking 
these sacred funds in a doubtful business enterprise. 
The expected benefit would seem uncertain, the loss 
certain; the thought of his loved ones struggling un- 
aided with the horrors of the pit would be too awful 
to be endured. So long as the Inferno is maintained 
with its perennial threat to all society, so long will 
any attempt at a rational redistribution of these 
charitable funds seem almost sacrilege. 

But, on the other hand, there is plainly a wide- 
spread feeling that the present inequality of these 



Chap. x. WHENCE COMETH HELP ? 113 

funds is dangerously great. On our principle that 
changes in social institutions, to be beneficial, should 
follow their natural lines of development, let us in- 
quire what is the present trend of ideas as to this 
institution of the World's Charitable List. 

It is a commonplace of current speech and news- 
paper comment that a rich man to-day is expected to 
leave, and usually does leave, a considerable portion 
of his fortune for the public benefit. We may add 
that it is also becoming evident that very few rich 
men are allowed to die before having this claim 
against them presented. They are during their life- 
time approached in behalf of all sorts of public 
charities, and no doubt on the whole respond with a 
pretty constant stream of gifts. 

Of course it is in no sense significant that occasion- 
ally a rich man makes a present. He may wish to do 
it for the pure enjoyment he gets out of it, or because 
he has at heart the welfare of some institution or 
person. But a movement of great volume in this 
direction is significant. The change which has come 
over the gifts of rich men within the last fifty years, 
■ — the increase in their size and frequency, — is so 
great as to suggest the operation of some new motive. 
We think in fact it is now pretty well understood and 
agreed that much of the money rich men give to pub- 
lic purposes is in reality given more as a debt due to 
the public than as a gift; — that it is given in defer- 
ence to a public sentiment, in which, no doubt, the 
givers often unite, that under our present system 
legal ownership is not conclusive as to moral right, 
and that its validity is only admitted subject to large 



114 THE WORLD'S CHARITABLE LIST. Book II. 

but undefined reservations of a paramount public 
right. 

It is difficult, however, to perceive much signifi- 
cance in this concession to public sentiment. The 
claim which is conceded is so indefinite that, even 
when allowed, it leads to no important result. It 
has been the fashion for some years to make much 
of this concession as foreshadowing an important 
amelioration of our social conditions. Our news- 
papers have hailed each new gift as marking a step 
on the road to a new era of peace and good-will be- 
tween rich and poor, and, by inference, of much 
happier conditions for the poor. Yet the desired 
goal seems to retreat about as fast as we move toward 
it. The rich men's gifts, while their total makes a 
rather grand appearance in a newspaper editorial on 
" The Common Interest of Rich and Poor," do not 
exactly make rapid strides in abolishing poverty. The 
truth is that, however grand in an indefinite way the 
concession may seem, the rich men define it to suit 
themselves, and we may safely assume that their 
definition of it, as shown by their gifts, will not revo- 
lutionize society. Gifts made under such circum- 
stances will give us shining instances, but they will 
not greatly alter the previously-existing averages. 
They will neither abolish the Inferno nor diminish to 
any notable extent the amount of the Major Charities. 

We think the public has come to appreciate this 
fact within the last few years, and to this appreciation 
we trace the growth of the comparatively new move- 
ment to tax inheritances progressively. This move- 
ment we regard as a much more important indication 
of coming changes in our social arrangements than 



Chap. x. WHENCE COMETH HELP ? 115 

the Millionaires' semi-free-will offerings. It discards 
nebulous sentiment and individual initiative, and pur- 
sues its ends by the means of legal enactments which 
fall on the willing and the unwilling alike. It is of 
course easy to say what the movement now is; less 
easy, by far, to say what seeds of greater things it may 
contain. A taxation of inheritances running up as 
high as ten per cent, for the larger amounts is cer- 
tainly a substantial slice off of a man's control over his 
property. But this rate is not unprecedented in our 
tax laws; it may mean simply that our legislators 
regard our rich men as good sources of revenue. 
It may mean, on the other hand, that our voters re- 
gard the taxation of great wealth at a higher rate as a 
leveling measure, — the entering lip of a wedge which 
will split asunder the great fortunes and distribute 
them among the people. Our own conclusion is that 
the latter reason accounts for by far the greater part 
of the popular support which this movement has 
developed. 

But the weakness of this movement, as of the other, 
is its indefiniteness. We may characterize both of 
them as a blind groping toward the light; — as pro- 
ceeding from a feeling which its possessors are seek- 
ing to carry into action, but for which they have as 
yet furnished no justification of pure reason. They 
regard the accumulations in the hands of the Million- 
aires as, in some sense at least, an injustice to society, 
yet with unimportant exceptions they approve of each 
link in the chain which brings them into existence. 
But it is manifest that if our present institutions be 
just, and these accumulations normally result from 
their operations, the accumulations themselves must 



116 THE WORLD'S CHARITABLE LIST. Book II. 

be just. To impugn their justice it is logically neces- 
sary to show where in our institutions the injustice 
lies. To admit each link of the chain of causation as 
just, yet stigmatize the result as an injustice, is simply 
to assent to the major and minor premise of a 
syllogism yet repudiate the conclusion which neces- 
sarily follows. 

We have taken these two examples of current senti- 
ment as including most of the specific protest against 
the accumulation and inheritance of great wealth. 
But almost every movement now on foot to better our 
social conditions springs in some degree from this 
protest. The Trades-Unions are an attempt to coun- 
teract the formidable power which large wealth mani- 
festly wields in industrial operations. The People's 
Party is a movement against this same power as ex- 
hibited in the political field. The Single Tax 
propaganda seeks to locate the injustice of great 
wealth in its power of securing, through the owner- 
ship of land, an increment of value due to the labor 
of the community at large. The Free Silver move- 
ment is a protest against the unearned increment 
which, through the operation of falling prices, accrues 
to large wealth, with a consequent enlargement of the 
claims of wealth against industry. 

We might instance numerous other cases where the 
protest against great wealth underlies important 
reform movements. The points of attack in these 
movements are various, but, mediately or immediate- 
ly, the object of attack is in every case great wealth 
and its unjust powers. However they may choose to 
operate, or whatever theory or lack of theory may 
determine the mode of their assault, they all bear 



Chap. x. WHENCE COMETH HELP ? 117 

testimony to the wide diffusion and persistency of the 
idea which is their common starting-point. 

Thus we find on examination that there is to-day a 
ground-swell of public sentiment setting strongly 
toward the restriction of the powers possessed by great 
wealth. It has reached a volume which possesses 
ample power to effect great changes in institutions, 
and to modify largely the face of society. Yet it is 
split into many factions, indefinite, halting, un- 
decided, — it lacks the leadership of a clear-cut theory. 
It has arrived at the stage where it should transmute 
its mass of indefinite power into political action, yet 
no clear lines of political action are in sight. It pre- 
sents the stage where the forces of social development 
are but awaiting the mould of political form to take 
the position of a new institution. And here it is that 
we find the typical, the preeminent opportunity for 
the work of the social reformer. 

It is to fit this need that we now proceed to set forth 
our theory. While we appreciate the immense diffi- 
culty of the task we have assumed, we cannot shrink 
from the test. If we can furnish the key to solve 
the enigma, we thus justify our inquiry and crown it 
with fruitfulness. If we cannot, our whole course 
of reasoning and investigation is fruitless and ends 
in a bog. 

We have already indicated with sufficient precision 
the requirements which our theory must meet. They 
are substantially these: It must, in the first place, 
serve to show us how the horrible Beast of our quest 
may be killed, — how the tremendous extremes of dire 
need and excessive wealth may be abolished. It 



118 THE WORLD'S CHARITABLE LIST. Book II. 

must, in the second place, respect the function which, 
— in the popular mind, at least, — the inherited funds 
discharge, — that of enabling a man to secure his 
family against coming to want after his death. This 
means that at present no wholesale redistribution of 
those funds is practicable. In the third place, it must 
utilize the strong and widespread sentiment against 
excessive riches as its ally, realizing that it springs 
from substantially the same causes that we have been 
investigating, and seeks substantially the same end. 
In the fourth place, it must supply an accurate and 
specific charge of injustice against our present social 
institutions in place of the incoherent, indefinite, in- 
stinctive complaint on which the present movement 
or sentiment rests; and must propose a specific and 
practicable change as the remedy which is to bring 
about the desired ends. 

In general we may say that the remedy which we 
are seeking must be old in its essence, but new in its 
application. We may imagine it as already existing 
in our present social organization as an ideal, perfectly 
familiar to every one of us, yet buried out of sight 
beneath the driftwood and wreckage of repeated social 
floods and upheavals. If we can uplift the debris 
and bring the hidden ideal to the light of day it will 
take its place at once as an integral part of our social 
life, and its newness will be forgotten in the feeling 
that we had it always with us. 

Such is the true work of the social reformer, — the 
work that really reforms, that gives new life to 
society, and is permanently valuable. Such a reform 
we attempt to present in the following pages. 



PART II.— THE REMEDY. 

BOOK III. 
THE PEOPLE'S HEEITAGE. 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE PEOPLE'S PROPERTY IN IDEAS. 

We seek an inheritance for the disinherited, — a 
provision for those poor wards of the Minor Charities 
who are compelled to sell their childhood for a scanty 
mess of pottage. 

]STot less earnestly, nor with less benevolent inten- 
tion, do we seek to make provision for the victims of 
the Major Charities, — those who have been crushed 
into pauperism by their loads of superfluous wealth. 
We seek to dower them with new wants of moving 
power, — wants which shall lead them to know the 
enduring satisfaction of strenuous and effective exer- 
tion. 

In these desires we have the support of a great 
volume of public sentiment, which, though now only 
seeing its course as through a glass darkly, and waver- 
ing and divided as to its ways and means, is neverthe- 
less fully with us in the ends we seek. 

Yet, as we have seen, to take the short and direct 
route to our end would be social butchery; it would 
cut through the nerves and blood-vessels and viscera 
of our social organization; — in short, it is at present 
impossible. 

In this dilemma we have recourse to a familiar con- 
ception lying very close to the root-ideas of mankind, 
and bearing, as we believe, promise of balm both for 
our diseases of starvation and for those of excess. We 



122 THE PEOPLE'S HEPJTAGE. Book III. 

make our claim upon the indefeasible Inheritance of 
the Kace, — the People's Property in Ideas. 



The present generation is the heir of all the ages. 
No amount of vain repetition or familiar levity can 
lessen the importance of this magnificent truth. Yet. 
they have served to obscure its practical realization. 
At present it may be said to belong to our mythology 
rather than to our ideas for the guidance of living. 

What is this Inheritance of the Kace? Is it simply 
a sounding phrase, meaning nothing? Or is it, on the 
other hand, a fact of immense significance, — so large 
and so near to us that it is as yet but dimly appre- 
hended? 

If asked what this generation has inherited from 
past ages the well-instructed school-boy would prob- 
ably name such things as the blessings of civil and 
religious liberty, the idea of immortality, the works 
of genius in literature and art, the demonstrations of 
mathematics, the discoveries in astronomy; with 
other items equally exalted and equally removed from 
our everyday thoughts. These things must, he rea- 
sons, constitute our inheritance from the ages; he has 
heard it so stated in divers orations, and has seen it in 
his reading-book repeatedly. 

]STor can we claim that our school-boy has over- 
rated the importance of these exalted conceptions. 
They are of the things that lift man above the brutes ; 
they hold the keys to the spiritual kingdom. They 
are therefore immeasurably valuable, and are rightly 
embalmed in our rhetorical literature and in our cere- 
monial speech. 



Chap. xi. THE PEOPLE'S PROPERTY IN IDEAS. 123 

But for some reason the purely practical aspect of 
this inheritance has been strangely neglected. It is 
not so with the heritage the Self-Made Man leaves to 
his children. When the last sad rites have been per- 
formed over the remains, and the will is brought 
forth, the family lawyer may preface his reading of 
the document with a feeling reference to the un- 
spotted record and honored name of their father. We 
cannot suppose the heirs are insensible to this loftier 
heritage : we take it for granted that they deeply 
appreciate and reverence the riches of a good name. 
But it is certain that this does not present itself to 
them as a complete inheritance. The deep interest 
they feel in the material portion shows itself when the 
items of " I give and bequeath " clothe them with the 
property rights of a generous livelihood and a rich 
store of seed-grain. 

So the heirs of the ages need not feel shame in 
acknowledging that they are of the earth earthy. 
They cannot live without material means of liveli- 
hood. They deeply desire to live well and nobly, to 
appreciate and apply spiritual truths and noble exam- 
ples; but the keenest interest they have in their 
inheritance is of necessity embodied in the question, 
What help has it toward a livelihood for us? Will 
our share in this inheritance provide us with bread 
and butter, or clothe us against the cold? 

In current speech and thought there is no recogni- 
tion of any such power in our general inheritance 
from the ages. If a man die and leave no financial 
provision for his family they are said to be totally 
unprovided for. They are the heirs of all the ages, 
and can feast their souls to repletion on spiritual 



124 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

triumphs and noble examples; but their share in this 
magnificent heritage will not bring them one crust 
of bread or one pound of coal. Yet it is only too 
evident that the exalted spiritual values are absolutely 
without benefit unless a man first possess the lowly 
material means of living: that "all that a man hath 
will he give for his life " or livelihood. 

Thus it is manifest that in facing the stern facts 
of daily living our inheritance from the ages is usually 
treated as of no importance whatever. The practical 
men ignore it completely; it has no value on 'Change. 
It is all very well for Fourth-of-July orations and for 
literary-circle essays, but it satisfies no hunger and 
clothes no nakedness. It is apparently a glorious 
myth. 

Yet as a matter of fact our inheritance from the 
ages is the greatest piece of property in existence. 
We mean by this not merely that it is rich in noble 
examples, or soul-inspiring thoughts, or great achieve- 
ments of genius. We mean that it has more power 
to support life and clothe nakedness and furnish 
material comfort than any other thing that admits of 
ownership. We mean that it is a tremendous bequest, 
not simply of soul-life or spiritual truths, but of plain 
material livelihood, to all the race. We mean, in 
short, that it is vast riches, real and not purely ideal, 
and that every human soul has an equal claim upon it. 

What has become of it % It has been left lying un- 
guarded in the highway. What would become of the 
hoard of gold in the United States sub-treasury if it 
were similarly neglected? But let us not stop now 
to inquire who were the pilferers. Let us first re- 
hearse some few items from the inventory of this vast 



Chap. xi. THE PEOPLE'S PROPERTY IN IDEAS. 125 

inheritance to assure ourselves that we are not mis- 
taken in believing it to be the richest property in 
existence. For the present let us ignore the exalted 
and ideal values, and come right down to practical 
facts hard enough to satisfy the Self-Made Man. 

About the year 1770 began to appear a remark- 
able series of inventions which ushered in what we 
may consider the modern era of industrial organiza- 
tion. They included Watt's development of the 
steam engine to a practical form, and some far- 
reaching innovations in the processes of the textile 
manufactures, chief among which were the spinning- 
frame and the spinning- jenny. 

The immediate practical results of these were 
highly important. The factory system almost im- 
mediately sprang into vigorous life as their first fruits. 
But still more important was the fact that the process 
of development thus started has ever since been 
steadily going on, and generally at a constantly 
accelerating rate. It is in these closing years of the 
Nineteenth Century proceeding with a rapidity and 
energy never exceeded; and no one who understands 
the volume of the forces which are operating to pro- 
duce it would undertake to form the slightest concep- 
tion of its ultimate limits. 

A century of this process of development produced 
results almost beyond conception. This century 
brings us down to the year 1870, — a time fresh in the 
memory of many who still consider themselves 
young. Of course these results as embodied in the 
status of society at this latter period are not difficult 
of comprehension in a general way. They were in 



126 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

the main the same as those we now see around us. 
But the vastness of the distance which society had 
moved in that century, and the magnitude and won- 
der of the achievement, can only be comprehended 
after a close study of the details involved, — if, in- 
deed, the human mind be at all adequate for such a 
task. 

The railroad, steamboat and telegraph; the pro- 
cesses of lithography and photography; the rotary 
printing-press, the Jacquard loom, the Fourdrinier 
paper machine; the cotton-gin, the sewing-machine, 
the reaping-machine; — these are but the beginning 
of the story. They are the striking landmarks of 
the triumphal progress, known to all the people, and 
each one of vast importance. But hardly less im- 
portant in the aggregate than these (and similar 
other) works of genius, and even more characteristic 
of the period, is the multitude of minor inventions 
which were during this century applied to and which 
powerfully affected every branch of industry. The 
whole vast aggregate of the forces of production was 
multiplied many times in effectiveness by the children 
of man's mind, and the machinery which did their 
bidding at almost every point immeasurably out- 
stripped in speed and deftness the unaided human 
hand. 

We are all tolerably familiar with the state of 
things in 1870. Let us painfully try to realize what 
it was a century before. Strike out, in imagination, 
the railroad, steamboat, telegraph, and all our modern 
wonder-workers; bring back the hand-loom and the 
spinning-wheel ; think of the slow canal-boats, and the 
heavily-laden wagons toiling through the muddy 



Chap. xi. THE PEOPLE'S PROPERTY IN IDEAS. 127 

roads, as the sole dependence for internal commerce. 
It is a far cry from that ancient day to this recent 
one. What shall we say is the difference in produc- 
tive power between the two systems? How much 
more could a million men working in the modern way 
produce than a million workers of the olden times? 

It is a subject too vast for even an approximate 
estimate. No man knows, or can know with any 
approach to accuracy. We have seen several esti- 
mates on this point from trained economists. The 
smallest comparative value assigned by any one of 
them to the power of the modern way was fivefold 
that of the ancient. Inadequate, indeed, this seems 
to us ; the general estimate also is considerably higher, 
— nearer twenty-fold. But let that pass; we will be 
moderate and take five as the correct ratio. 

What, let us now ask, is the capitalized value of 
these inventions? In the aggregate they enable our 
industrial world to produce five times as much per 
capita as could be produced before their advent. 
What would the world pay for their use rather than 
return to the old way? What are they worth in 
dollars? 

A question, verily, that would need a vast array of 
figures for its answer. We shall not try to compute 
the sum; everyone interested shall figure it out for 
himself. Yet we may safely assume that it would be 
an amount of money never before named as actually 
representing value, — that these inventions constitute 
the greatest piece of property in existence. 

Yet this whole vast property is now part of the 
Inheritance of the Race. It rests entirely with the 
people to say what shape its value shall take. And 



128 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

in that value, of whatever kind it may be, every 
human being has a right to an equal share. 

It may not be true always that the People's In- 
heritance will relieve no hunger! 

We have instanced the industrial inventions of the 
century from 1770 to 1870 A. D. as a typical portion 
of the People's Inheritance. We do so in the first 
place because they exhibit most impressively, and 
through facts familiar to everybody, the transform- 
ing power of ideas on production. But there is 
another reason for dwelling further on this period. 
It also demonstrates unmistakably, and by facts 
familiar to everybody, that valuable ideas are 
property in the strictest sense of the term, and may 
be made to yield immense incomes in money. 

Nearly all of the important inventions which made 
this century an era of unexampled progress were in 
the beginning private property. Generally speaking, 
each was conceived and developed by some individual, 
and was held by him or his assigns for a term of years 
as a monopoly. During this period he had the sole 
privilege of utilizing his invention; or if he chose he 
transferred this privilege to others in return for a 
money payment. The idea which he had originated 
and brought to practical usefulness was his property 
just as were his horse, his factory, and his bank 
account. Tremendous sums of money were realized 
by the owners of valuable patents, and the conception 
of ideas as possessing vast money value became too 
familiar to receive any notice. 

But in order that this state of things might exist 
it was necessary that the State should recognize and 



Chap. xi. THE PEOPLE'S PROPERTY IN IDEAS. 129 

protect property in ideas. When, at the end of the 
statutory term, such recognition ceased, anyone who 
pleased was at liberty to use the patented idea. The 
patent was then said to be thrown open to the public, 
its power of returning revenue to the originator 
ceased, and the fact that it had a value expressible in 
dollars and cents was lost sight of. At this point all 
the items of the People's Property in Ideas became 
lost wealth; they disappeared from the inventory of 
the race. 

But here we may profitably stop to inquire: Why 
withdraw legal protection of the patented idea at the 
end of a term of years? If property in ideas is a 
natural right, why does it not exist without limit of 
time? The State does not cease to protect a man's 
property in his house or railroad share because he has 
held them seventeen years. On the other hand, if 
it is not a natural right, why recognize it as legal 
property at all? 

The doctrine that there is no such thing as property 
in ideas, and that patents are merely oppressive 
monopolies, has been largely held and advocated. It 
is especially championed by the spokesmen for con- 
siderable bodies of workingmen, — those who pose as 
representing the advanced claims of the labor ele- 
ment. We think their position is ill-chosen and 
unjust, and that if it prevail its injustice will recoil 
upon their own heads. It is the less favored mem- 
bers of society that have most cause to guard jealously 
the title-deeds of the People's Property in Ideas. 

In opposition to this doctrine we shall attempt to 
show in the first place the justice and firm foundation 
in natural right of exclusive property in ideas, and in 



130 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Buok III. 

the second place the reasonableness and consistency 
of limiting the property right to a term of years. 

The popular weakness of the claim of right for 
property in ideas seems to consist largely of its help- 
lessness in default of protection from the State. If 
such a right cannot exist without being bolstered up 
by the power of the civil arm, the popular reasoning 
appears to be, it is evident that its moral basis is doubt- 
ful. Persons who take this ground very often admit 
the practical wisdom of granting patents as a stimulus 
to inventiveness, while questioning the validity of the 
claim that they rest upon natural right. 

Yet property in ideas clearly rests full upon the 
only valid basis that exists for private property of any 
description, — the right of labor to its product. Use- 
ful ideas, and especially useful ideas practically ap- 
plied, are clearly the product of labor,- — and of very 
intense labor. Any one who doubts this can easily 
demonstrate its truth to his entire satisfaction by try- 
ing to produce a few of them. If every man have a 
right to the fruits of his labors, it certainly cannot 
impair this right that the fruits happen to consist of 
ideas or applications of ideas. That such ideas are 
much more easy of unauthorized appropriation than 
wheat or furniture does indeed add to the difficulty 
of the police function of the State in relation to them, 
and in many cases makes impossible any practical 
recognition of them, but it does not in the least impair 
the natural right. This right is evidently as large 
as it would be could the originator use his ideas to 
their full value without revealing them. But prac- 
tically he is obliged, in the process of utilizing them, 



Chap. xi. THE PEOPLE'S PROPERTY IN IDEAS. 131 

to make them familiar to the public, and therefore if 
not protected by law their appropriation is easy. But 
for the State to veto such appropriation creates no 
other monopoly than that which necessarily exists in 
all private property; for it to allow such appropriation 
is merely a confession that there are insuperable prac- 
tical difficulties in the way of granting protection to 
some forms of property in ideas. 

The suspicion largely entertained of property in 
ideas rests, we fear, on hazy conceptions of right. 
People in general often confuse the validity of a right 
with the efficacy of its practical protection. It is 
hard to secure the same popular respect for a man's 
right to his fruit-trees as to his finger-rings; likewise 
the seizure of his ideas is so easily accomplished with- 
out violence to his person or tangible possessions that 
to many respectable citizens the offence seems venial. 
But there is still another incident of property in ideas 
as it exists in the shape of patents which evidently has 
a tendency to cause it to be ranked in the popular 
mind with monopolies. This is the prohibition it 
lays upon the use of the protected ideas by a bona fide 
second inventor. 

If a man make an ordinary chair, it is his property. 
If another man independently make a similar chair, 
he also enjoys the resulting property right. But in 
the case of an idea protected by a patent, the second 
inventor is not allowed the naturally resulting 
property right. Ko matter how clearly it may be 
proved that he has developed his invention inde- 
pendently, without knowledge of his predecessor's 
work, the latter's priority in time debars the second 
inventor from enjoyment of the fruits of his labors. 



132 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

Here we have manifestly a clear violation of 
natural right by the law-created patent-right. But it 
is equally clear that it is unavoidable. It is a neces- 
sary result of the shape into which property in ideas 
is put to make it practically available. Such property 
must be a monopoly, or it has no money value. If a 
plea of subsequent independent invention were to be 
admitted as a valid defence to the assertion of the 
earlier patent-right, of course no such right could 
possibly be satisfactorily enforced. Claims of inde- 
pendent invention would be brought forward so freely 
by impostors, and for purposes of obstruction, that 
defending a patent right would become an insup- 
portable burden, and the attempt to do so would be 
abandoned. 

But although it is impossible in practice to accept 
subsequent invention as affecting the monopoly of a 
granted patent, it is evident that it does to some ex- 
tent undermine its moral basis; and this fact is recog- 
nized by limiting the patent-right in point of duration. 
No such limit exists to a full property-right ; if it once 
inhere in a man it persists unaffected by lapse of time. 
If there were only the property in the idea to be con- 
sidered no reason is apparent why patent-rights should 
not endure indefinitely, like property-rights in gen- 
eral. But the suppression of the natural right of 
reinventing the patented device, although a necessary 
incident of an efficiently-guarded patent-right, grows 
more and more oppressive with the lapse of time. 
Every passing year makes it more probable that a 
reinvention would have appeared but for the legal 
inhibition. The inventor is in most cases merely a 
little in advance of his race; in default of his inven- 



Chap, xl THE PEOPLE'S PROPERTY IN IDEAS. 133 

tion the race would not have waited long for a sub- 
stitute. 

Judged, therefore, by the principle which we have 
accepted as a foundation-stone, the right of property 
in ideas is clear, beyond reasonable cavil. Its boun- 
daries are not exactly so evident as to need no exposi- 
tion, but upon examination two points concerning 
them become manifest: In the beginning the right 
belongs to the originator; ultimately it comes to 
belong to the whole human race. Between these 
extremes lies a debatable territory over which claim- 
ants might contend to eternity without reaching a 
definite conclusion. In such a case the practical 
necessity of establishing a boundary line gives a moral 
sanction to any reasonable compromise. The exist- 
ing time limit upon patents and copyrights is 
assuredly such a compromise. 

Therefore we may conclude that the granting of 
patents with full monopoly powers but of a limited 
duration is a reasonable and necessary compromise 
measure. It merely substitutes for a perfectly valid 
natural right, of unlimited duration but imperfectly 
protected, a legal right which, at the expense of cer- 
tain indefinite counter-claims, is protected amply, but 
only for a short term of years. 

But for the purposes of our inquiry the important 
conclusion of the whole matter is this, — that out of 
the hands of its first producer the property in an idea 
falls into the broad lap of the human race. Its 
originator cannot long hold it; the claims of his suc- 
cessors are too strong. ISTo one of his successors can 
lay claim to it : they are too many, and the whole race 
is too close on their heels. However grandly the 



134 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book in. 

mounted advance-guard may lead the march of the 
industrial army, the resistless momentum of its move- 
ment belongs to the broad ranks of fighting men. The 
conquered territory falls not alone to the leaders. 
There are, indeed, rich prizes for leadership, and 
plentiful spoil for those who head the forlorn-hope, 
but the fertile fields won and permanently occupied 
belong to the army, and only to the whole army. 

The inventions which in the aggregate constitute 
the moving force of the Miracle Century form cer- 
tainly the most striking portion of the People's 
Inheritance. Probably, fairly judged, they are more 
valuable, rated in money, than all the rest combined. 
But they are very far from being all of this inherit- 
ance, and their selection as representing it conveys 
small idea of the range and variety of the People's 
Property in Ideas. 

The complete Property comprises all useful or 
valuable ideas, of whatever kind, contributed by men 
to the service of their race. In time of appearance 
they range from the prehistoric ages to the day of 
the date hereof. The man of the Neanderthal skull 
may have developed some rude tool which, in a per- 
fected shape, our mechanics are still using; some 
workman of to-day is doubtless brooding over an in- 
vention which will serve the human race until its final 
disappearance. In classification they comprise, beside 
the industrial ideas, which we have already consid- 
ered rather fully, the literary and artistic ideas such 
as are now the subject of copyright; the wonderful 
discoveries in medicine and surgery, which, by the code 
of honor of a noble profession, have been freely dedi- 



Chap. n. THE PEOPLE'S PROPERTY IN IDEAS. 135 

cated from their birth to the service of mankind; the 
homely wisdom of the common people, which lives 
and grows and renders its modest service in passing 
from lip to lip; the deep searchings of science, which, 
lightly valued by the multitude, are yet forging 
chains to bind the forces of Nature to man's service. 
It were vain to try to catalogue these riches. They 
surround and envelope us, as all - pervading and 
abundant as the air. Whatever task we attempt, they 
are laboring at our side; whatever we achieve, with 
them we share the glory. We think we stand erect, 
but in truth we never cease to lean heavily on van- 
ished and forgotten shoulders. We think we are rich, 
but it would bankrupt us utterly to surrender the 
heritage which has come down to us from past ages. 

The truth is, a radical readjustment of our current 
ideas on this subject is greatly needed. We speak of 
the glorious results of individual effort. They are 
indeed often glorious, and we would not for a moment 
dim their proper lustre. But the fruits which we 
habitually credit to individual effort are in large part 
due to the ceaseless cooperation of the unfailing 
Heritage of the Race. Let the man who thinks he 
has achieved vast fortune as the fruit of his unaided 
endeavors imagine himself attempting the same feat 
upon Crusoe's island. Although he would be able, 
if reared in a civilized land, to take with him much of 
his inheritance from the ages enclosed in his cranium, 
we think he would soon see how puny were his own 
powers matched against Nature. In fact, vast power 
over Nature belongs to no man ; only wide cooperative 
human effort, — clasping hands across the gulf of the 
ages as well as around the earth, — can command her 



136 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book ril. 

riches. Civilization and its fruits are communal 
property. 

When the Self-Made Man thinks npon his millions, 
and in a reminiscent reverie passes in review the 
career in which he gathered them, his breast expands 
with pride. But let him gaze farther into the re- 
cesses of the past if he would honestly follow his 
millions to their source. Let him glance back to the 
prehistoric ages, and trace the slow and toilsome path 
of his race. Let him think of the long nomadic cen- 
turies, the toilsome agricultural periods, the rude 
beginnings of industry, the slow development of com- 
merce. Let him note with quickening pulse how, as 
the world draws near the Wonder Century, its forces 
gather for the conflict. Its furnaces roar, its engines 
throb; its mighty hosts of industry sally forth to con- 
quer the world for man's kingdom. They are vic- 
torious; its riches become the prize of their warfare; 
man reigns triumphant over the earth-forces; their 
spoils are gathered together to be the prize of the 
strongest. And now cometh our Self-Made Man, and 
by boldly striking out for himself and paying strict 
attention to business amasseth in a career of some 
thirty years the results wrought by the travail of all 
the ages. Verily, he hath cause for musing long and 
seriously in his reminiscent reverie! 

We do not wish to repudiate the well-founded 
claims of the Self-Made Man; we have no thought of 
denying to industry its just rewards. But let us 
render to industry the fruits of its labors ; to the whole 
human race let us render the fruits of its glorious 
Inheritance, — its Property in Ideas. 



CHAPTEK XII. 

THE PRESENT BENEFICIARIES. 

It may be suspected that in our last chapter we 
have been making a desperate assault upon an empty 
fort. " Who/' we are asked, " maintains the nega- 
tive? You contend that this Property in Ideas has no 
other owner than the race. Surely, if this proposi- 
tion be your objective point, we can put it through 
by unanimous consent and adjourn the debate. We 
not only admit that it rightfully belongs to the whole 
race, but we call attention to the fact that it is now in 
their undisputed possession. The poorest ward of 
your Minor Charities has free access to it, and is 
privileged to make unrestrained use of it; the multi- 
millionaire has no more, no less. Surely this is 
equality made perfect." 

We admit that this main thesis of our last chapter 
has never, to our knowledge, been seriously ques- 
tioned. It is usually granted with a cheerful and 
even hasty alacrity. But the admission that this 
property right exists is always accompanied with the 
assumption that its practical effects have been fully 
acknowledged, — that the goods have been delivered 
over into the hands of the rightful owners. As the 
facts seem to us to be far from justifying this latter 
conclusion we suspect that the assent is given too 
easily, — that the real position of our interlocutors is 
expressed by the World's familiar answer to the 
pleading and logic of all manner of reformers: — 

137 



138 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

" Your contention is granted, provided you do not 
draw any practical conclusions from it." 

As we are attempting to establish the position for 
the sole and express purpose of drawing some import- 
ant practical conclusions from it, we distrust such an 
easy-going assent as this. The reasons we have given 
in our last chapter are, we think, such as will justify 
the acceptance of our thesis for better or for worse, 
including all its practical results. We are glad to 
believe, however, that we have the support of a nearly 
unanimous sentiment for our theory, even if it go no 
further. The advance from supporting a theory to 
accepting its practical results is often a long and hard 
step; but the pressure of facts and the logic of events 
are- sooner or later pretty certain to reinforce the 
argument. 

Granting, then, that all useful or valuable ideas 
are rightfully, in the beginning, the property of their 
originators; that when their claims expire the ideas 
become the property of the race; that the claims of 
the originators have expired upon the most valuable 
ideas of mankind, including those underlying our 
modern industrial development; that the whole race, 
without distinction of person or condition, has now 
full property rights in these valuable (or invaluable) 
ideas; — granting all these points let us now inquire, 
Are these property rights practically recognized? Are 
the heirs, — all the heirs, — actually receiving the due 
benefits from their several shares in this inheritance? 

Our interlocutor evidently thinks that such is pre- 
cisely the case. He maintains that the property is 
rendering its benefits to all the heirs; that the poorest 



Chap. xii. THE PRESENT BENEFICIARIES. 139 

of them has free access to it, and is privileged to make 
unrestrained use of it. He assumes that this is the 
same thing as saying that they are enjoying full prop- 
erty rights in it, — that " it is in their undisputed 
possession." 

But is it the same? Is a privilege to use valuable 
things freely, in common with others, a full enjoy- 
ment of the right of property in them? Let us see. 

The sons of the Self-Made Man received at his 
death a fortune of some millions apiece. But they 
received also a surprise; they found their father had 
been carrying an ideal around with him, secreted 
somewhere in his inner heart. When his will was 
read it was discovered that he had left half a million 
to the denominational college of which he was a trus- 
tee, and to which, — so his sons thought, — he had been 
sufficiently generous while living. The sons had free 
access to the benefits of this bequest if they wished to 
enter the college classes; they were privileged to make 
unrestrained use of the educational facilities it main- 
tained; in short, according to our interlocutor's view, 
it was " in their undisputed possession." Yet so far 
were these young men from agreeing with this most 
reasonable theory that they spent several thousand 
dollars in trying to break their father's will for the 
purpose of getting the funds still further into their 
undisputed possession: — that is to say, getting them 
out of the hands of the college and definitely into 
their own. 

Property to which everybody else has the same 
right of access as ourselves may be extremely valua- 
ble, but it is not our property. It may be rendering 
benefits to the full extent of its value, but we have no 



140 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

control over them; we do not even know who are the 
beneficiaries. It is only in ceremonial oratory and 
rhetorical literature that such property is considered 
an inheritance worthy of notice. Yet the low esteem 
in which it is held is due, not necessarily to any actual 
lack of value, but to the mode in which it is owned 
and its value realized, — in legal phrase, its tenure. 

" But," says our interlocutor, " property so used is 
rendering value to the people who use it. In this 
case all the people are free to use it. Since, as you 
say, it is so immensely valuable, it is fair to assume 
that all will use it. Therefore, whether it is in their 
undisputed possession or not, they are getting the full 
benefit of it. If they are not, will you kindly show 
us who are? " 

This we shall be glad to attempt. We shall try to 
show 7 who are, financially, the present beneficiaries 
of the People's Property in Ideas. "While we cannot 
actually claim that its usufruct is spirited away to 
another planet, and hence confers no benefits upon 
the people at large, we shall undertake to show that 
its ultimate distribution takes a form which is far 
from being generally understood, and still farther 
from being appreciated at its true value. 

Our first impression, in starting to find the benefi- 
ciaries of the People's Property in Ideas, is that there 
are none. Xo one seems willing to admit that he 
has received any money value from this source. The 
whole vast income seems to be lost. 

As a matter of fact, when we come to think of it 
very few people do use these ideas directly. The 
valuable ideas which gave us the Wonder Century 



Chap. xn. THE PRESENT BENEFICIARIES. 141 

of industrial development are somewhat like the 
Douglas' sword, — they are not to be wielded by every 
passer-by. They and their applications are highly 
technical and intricate ; a person requires an ex- 
tended special education to be able to command their 
services, even if there be no obstacle but their own 
inherent difficulty. Then the machinery and ap- 
paratus in which they are embodied are also highly 
intricate and expensive, — far beyond the power of 
the ordinary citizen to make or to purchase. Al- 
together it is probably quite well within the mark to 
say that not one per cent, of the population is at 
all in the habit of making direct use of the ideas 
which so miraculously transformed the world. The 
ordinary respectable member of our body politic and 
social would be quite unable to say when or where 
in the preceding day's or week's work he had used 
an idea from the Inheritance to the increase of his 
wealth. 

But if their use be practically restricted to the com- 
paratively few persons who can command the 
technical skill and the capital to make them available, 
w r hat concentrated benefits these favored individuals 
must receive! The manufacturers and users of this 
complicated machinery certainly cannot follow the 
example of the ordinary citizen in " swearing off " 
their benefits from these ideas. They are visibly 
using them, largely and constantly, with immense 
increase of their output or their command of iSTature's 
forces. 

And yet if we take this new cue and interrogate 
the manufacturers and users of machinery and em- 
bodied inventions, we shall receive as little satisfac- 



142 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

tion as from the ordinary citizen. Do they receive 
any benefits? Not at all. Their business has been 
going from bad to worse for the last thirty years. 
The golden age of the industry was before all these 
new-fangled ideas came in; then there were some 
profits to be made. As a matter of fact they think 
the margins on which they work are smaller now 
than ever before. They have certainly grown de- 
cidedly smaller since their adoption of this last great 
improvement in their special machinery. They had 
expected to reduce expenses and get a little profit, 
but their competitors began to cut prices almost be- 
fore they got the machines installed, and of course 
they had to follow suit. The whole benefit of the 
new machinery, for which they had expended a 
fortune, had gone to the jobbers, who had got their 
goods for almost nothing, and to the workmen who 
ran the machines, who made very big wages. 

After our previous experience we hardly need to 
ask the jobbers and the workmen to know that they 
will deny the soft impeachment. The jobbers, of 
course, profited not at all by the reduced prices, — 
they were forced to make even greater reductions to 
retailers; and when we approach the retailers we 
shall have a tale of woe to hear concerning the neces- 
sary reduction of prices to the purchasers. The 
workmen's story we all know very well: — nine- 
tenths of the workmen were dismissed when the new 
machines came in, and the few who were retained to 
run the machines, while they made good wages at 
first, soon began to have their piece-rates cut, and 
were laid off more freely in dull seasons. 

The details, of course, can be infinitely varied to 



Chap. xii. THE PRESENT BENEFICIARIES. 143 

agree with any one of the branches of business 
affected, but we find the same general facts urged 
throughout the whole field of industrial and com- 
mercial life : — the increased power with which modern 
inventions have endowed the world has not directly 
made the lot of any producer or any distributor a 
whit easier, or been the means of more richly reward- 
ing his labor. In the tremendous complexity of 
modern production many new varieties of talent have 
been called for by newly-arising conditions, and many 
possessors of such talents have been able to fit them- 
selves into well-paid places in the social economy ; 
but such benefits are merely incidental. To offset 
them not a few similar places have been abolished 
by the march of the new conditions: — the sufferers 
in these cases have long been trying to find comfort 
in the fact that such troubles are merely incidental. 
But for the main stream of benefit from modern 
inventions we may search in vain from top to bottom 
of the producing forces. The discoveries which 
have so immensely aided production have not in the 
least benefited the producer. Every man feels him- 
self as relentlessly ground between the upper and the 
nether millstone as ever he was; the effect of the new 
inventions in removing pressure from one direction 
has been promptly counteracted by the automatic 
action of supply and demand in increasing it from the 
other. 

It need hardly be remarked that this universal tale 
of woe from all ranks of our industrial organization 
is received with much mutual suspicion. The cap- 
tains of industry and the workmen, the producers and 
the distributors, the capitalists and the borrowers face 



144 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book ill. 

each other with wholesale charges of duplicity in this 
respect. It is impossible to make workmen as a class 
believe that their employers are not enjoying un- 
reasonably large profits. The strikes and other 
machinations of the labor organizations are an attempt 
to force a division of these profits, and they proceed 
in full faith, never doubting that they exist. Con- 
trariwise the employers seem to think and no doubt 
often do think that the workmen are drawing 
enormous wages. Their investigating committees 
prove with smooth regularity that wages expressed in 
money are steadily rising, and that at the same time 
the purchasing power of each dollar is steadily in- 
creasing. 

There is an important basis of fact for these sup- 
positions on both sides. The employers of our day 
are many of them becoming rich with great rapidity. 
The number of new fortunes constantly growing up 
among the captains of industry is ample proof that the 
general faith of the workmen in the existence of these 
golden streams is not entirely mistaken. On the 
other hand the number of workmen who command 
w T ages that w T ere unknown a generation since is 
without doubt considerable, and their golden hoard 
in the savings banks, — if indeed it be their hoard, — 
has of late years risen enormously. Each class thus 
thinks it sees the other manifestly enjoying rich 
fruits from the wonder-working ideas of the People's 
Property, and each is undoubtedly enjoying fruits 
more or less rich, and which have more or less con- 
nection with the gigantic industrial enterprises which 
grew from the seed of the Wonder Century. 

Yet a close analysis of the results on which these 



Chap. xii. THE PRESENT BENEFICIARIES. 145 

impressions rest will, we think, show them to be in- 
cidental, not typical. The money which these men 
have made has been due, not to any part which the 
Property in Ideas had in helping along their industrial 
operations, but to the fact that it supplied a good 
market for the especial talents or facilities which 
they were able to command. The Property in Ideas 
needed great business ability, large command of 
money and much technical skill to enable it to develop 
its vast increase in productive power. It had to pay 
liberally for these, — and it was able to. The expense 
of procuring the necessary new machinery, new talents 
and new skill was of course properly chargeable 
against the results of the new processes, and these 
results were so wonderful that the expense of their 
attainment seemed insignificant. But of course the 
wealth which was amassed in the process of outfitting 
the Property in Ideas for its campaign of industrial 
conquest was entirely apart from the real benefits of, 
or profits from, the Property. These profits are to be 
ascertained by deducting from the increased produc- 
tivity of industry the increased cost of operation. 
They are undoubtedly immense, almost outreaching 
imagination, and they have fallen to the share of — ■ 
somebody. But we think that the various ranks of 
the productive forces of society are both candid and 
in the right when each one, in answer to our query, 
Who is the beneficiary? repeats in unison, It is 
not I. 

Our search, therefore, in the field of industry for 
the fruits of the Property in Ideas has had only a 
negative result. The Property is ever actively and 
fruitfully at work in the industrial field, but the 



146 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

industrial forces are its agents, its bond-servants, — 
not its beneficiaries. We must seek elsewhere for the 
ultimate destination of the fruits resulting from its 
vast productive activity. 

To whom then does this rich harvest go, if the 
workers have no share in it ? 

Harvests, agricultural and mechanical, spiritual 
and material, go now, as they have always gone, — to 
the lord of the harvest. And the undisputed lord 
of this rich material harvest, as the Property is now 
held and managed, is that shadowy and mysterious, 
but none the less mighty and colossal, figure, the 
prime mover and final governor of all the operations 
of our productive machinery, — the Consumer. 

" But," we are here reminded, " all producers are 
consumers also. Why then make all this flourish 
about the entrance of a new character upon our stage 
when it is simply made up of the members of society's 
productive forces in another aspect? If the Consumer 
be the lord of this harvest, so is the Producer, for 
they are evidently one and the same person — or 
abstraction." 

Nevertheless, we maintain, the Consumer is a new 
character upon our stage. He is so far from being 
the same as the mass of producers that most of the 
latter pass their lives in a desperate struggle with 
him. Each producer, being a consumer also, does 
indeed contribute to his existence, but fails to recog- 
nize any trace of his own features in the fierce power 
with which he strives. The Consumer is in a sense 
the aggregate of all society considered only as con- 
sumers, but with this important additional attribute: 



Chap. xn. THE PRESENT BENEFICIARIES. 147 

— his demand upon the productive forces of society 
is expressed in money. 

Each member of the human race has a demand 
upon the productive forces of society. He is ever 
calling loudly upon them to clothe him, feed him, 
house him. But many have only service to offer in 
exchange for the service they seek. Easy enough, 
one might think, to arrange a mutual service. Ap- 
parently; but such is not the way of the world. 
Every man when he actually comes to sell his ser- 
vices scorns the services that are offered him in ex- 
change. He looks past them, and sees the glitter 
of the gold which commands all, and all manner of 
services. This so powerfully affects his imagination 
that he ignores all else. Only for this universal power 
will he labor, but for this he will labor without limit. 
And all his fellows are like unto him ; all the produc- 
ing forces work with their eyes fixed, not on the ser- 
vices they will ultimately secure, but on the golden 
master of all services. And lord as he is of the golden 
mandate which is the desire of all mankind, the Con- 
sumer straightway makes himself lord of the harvest 
that results from their efforts. 

It is the potent magic of this mass of golden 
promise that moves the machinery of production. 
The Consumer is constantly dangling it before the 
eyes of the producers. From this store he promises 
interest for the capitalist, profit for the captain of 
industry, wages for the workman, margin for the 
middleman and retailer. But he stipulates that in 
return for these he must have all the fruits of in- 
dustry. No matter how plentiful the harvest, it 
must all be brought to the Consumer and laid at his 



148 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

feet. His demand is always for more, and his 
ceaselessly-repeated query to the productive forces is, 
What is the utmost you can bring me for my gold? 
And the productive forces ever answer, by deeds and 
by words, with awful earnestness, All that we have, 
all that we can wrest from the grasp of Nature, will 
we give for your gold. We must have it : it is our 
life. 

The strife between Consumer and Producer cre- 
ates one of the most obscure and perplexing riddles 
of social science. Why should the two wings of 
society wage relentless war upon each other? As we 
have seen, the two may be said to be, in a certain sense, 
one: — every producer is also a consumer; most con- 
sumers are to some extent producers. In the serene 
times of the older political economy they were pictured 
lying down peacefully together as a happy family, 
and mutually enriching each other by exchanging 
goods for money and money for goods. But there is 
now undoubtedly war between them, despite their 
close relationship; and its results leave small room for 
doubt as to which is the lion and which the lamb. 
Looking at the whole face of society broadly it is 
evident that the position of the Consumer is infinitely 
the stronger, and that in general the Producer is 
being constantly forced to greater exertions to escape 
being devoured. 

We cannot undertake to give more than a hasty 
glance at the reasons for this anomalous situation. 
In general we may say that while a large part of the 
money demand for goods comes from those entirely 
outside the producing forces, yet the Consumer is 
largely a Frankenstein created unwittingly by the 



Chap. xii. THE PRESENT BENEFICIARIES. 149 

consuming individual. The latter, when he makes 
his simple demand, expressed in money, upon the 
producing forces of society, thinks it a small matter 
that it shall be as peremptory as Fate. His claim 
is so trifling that he feels justified in being harsh 
about it. Yet the practical result is that his demand 
and ten million others coalesce into a gigantic ogre, 
who, when he faces his own creators and in thunderous 
tones makes his limitless requisition upon the fruits of 
their labors, is so terrible as to scare all but the 
strongest of them half to death. Our little consumer, 
could he see the result of his acts, would never think 
of starting a force which would thus return to plague 
him. Yet he and his kind, and his betters and their 
kind, do, day by day, unite to create these Franken- 
steins, under whose ponderous millstones they are 
made to groan and sweat and agonize over intermin- 
able and impossible tasks. 

But what rational explanation can be given of the 
secure mastery held by the Consumer? Why should 
the producers always be so terribly anxious to ex- 
change their services for his gold ? Why should he 
be able so calmly to assume that any producer will 
spring up with alacrity at the beck of his golden 
wand ? The exchange of money for services, services 
for money, is an equal exchange; why should it not 
be equally sought by both parties? It will hardly 
serve as a general explanation to assume that the 
producers are scared; the productive forces of society 
are captained by men who " don't scare." 

Truly, a difficult question: perhaps our subsequent 
researches may throw some light upon it. But here 
we may be allowed to say, We do not know; we do 



150 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

not, for purposes of this inquiry, need to know. Yet 
one point we may touch upon now before we leave 
the subject. Money commands the completed fruits 
of civilization. However small its amount, it is 
universally available; to that amount it meets all the 
material needs of life. The services of the forces of 
industry, on the other hand, and also its growing- 
product, its tools, appliances, and all other forms of 
working capital, are incomplete. However valuable 
they may be as means, they need cooperation from 
other producers and other products to become avail- 
able for all the needs of life. In the hands of men 
who can command this cooperation, — such men as 
the captains of industry who "don't scare," — they 
may be reasonably safe possessions. But in the hands 
of owners who have only their own services at com- 
mand these services are the most precarious form of 
property. Small wonder that the pressure from their 
owners to turn them into the completed form of 
property,- — money, — becomes intense. 

But, reason or no reason, it is a broad-based fact 
that the Consumer is lord of the industrial harvest. 
Contrary to the theories of the older political economy 
the producer is not his equal, but with much self- 
abasement seeketh him from afar. Contrary to the 
belief of the workingmen the Captain of Industry 
does not retain for himself the riches of the Property 
in Ideas which he utilizes; he passes it on to the Com 
sumer. Contrary to the thesis of the well-to-do, the 
workingman is not the beneficiary; its benefits slip 
out of his hands and gravitate to their own inevitable 
destination. The Consumer is the captain-general 
of the captains of industry ; out of the fruits of their 



Chap. xii. THE PRESENT BENEFICIARIES. 151 

activity he pays them wages for themselves and their 
subordinates, and the necessary expense of conducting 
their business; but he has no faith in profit-sharing. 
The net profits are his and his alone. 

But in what shape do the profits reach the Con- 
sumer? There are, no doubt, many persons who 
have been consuming more or less of the fruits of 
industry for lo these many years, but have never to 
their knowledge been invited to share in any distri- 
bution of profits. One of these might ask if he be 
not a part of our personified Consumer, and if so, 
why lie has not participated in these tremendous gains. 

He has participated. If he have paid five dollars for 
railroad transportation when the same work would, 
before the railroads were at his service, have cost him 
one hundred, he has received a profit — or dividend — ■ 
of ninety-five dollars from the Property in Ideas. If 
he have paid twenty-five dollars for a watch when a 
similar timepiece would have cost his grandfather 
seventy-five, the People's Inheritance has paid him 
fifty dollars. If modern industry in any of its 
protean shapes have given him for a trifling sum ser- 
vice which a hundred years ago could not have been 
bought with a kingdom, he has received value from 
the communal wealth which is not made less important 
by the difficulty of fixing upon it a valuation in terms 
of money. 

This is the final shape which the profit from the 
Property in Ideas takes. The Consumer absorbs it 
in the shape of cheaper prices on the articles he pur- 
chases. The whole vast property goes to reducing 
his expenses. 

It may very fairly be pointed out in answer to this, 



152 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

that much of the most characteristic product of 
modern industry was utterly unknown under the old 
regime, and hence no price comparisons can be made. 
ISTo telephones or hand-cameras or bicycles were to be 
had in the year 1770, for any price. But we may 
fairly bring this under our general statement by con- 
sidering such things as being at that date infinitely 
costly. As these products are now within the reach 
of millions the reduction from infinite cost to mod- 
erate cost is the achievement of modern industrial 
development. Evidently the only exception that can 
fairly be taken to our general rule as applied to such 
cases is that it greatly understates the case. We 
claim that our communal Property in Ideas has 
effected a tremendous cheapening of nearly all articles 
used by man. In cases like those mentioned above it 
has done this, but it has done much more, — it has 
given us something new under the sun. 

Taking the phrase, therefore, with this rational 
broadening of its meaning, the Property in Ideas has 
been used solely to cheapen articles of consumption. 
This cheapness has inured solely to the benefit of the 
Consumer. And now let us resolve our Consumer 
into his elements and discover what persons benefit 
by this progressive cheapening. 

Evidently our Consumer is made up of abstract 
demand for consumption, not of persons consuming. 
The personal element is nothing; the amount of con- 
sumption is the important matter. The person who 
has the largest part in the make-up of the Consumer, 
who benefits most largely by the cheapening which 
inures to his benefit, is simply he who is the largest 
consumer; he who shares least or not at all in the 



Chap. xn. THE PRESENT BENEFICIARIES. 153 

profits from the Property is he who consumes least 
or nothing from the fruits of industry." 

Thus, though the ownership of the industrial 
Property in Ideas resides equally in each member of 
the race, without distinction of person or condition, 
the benefits received from it are distributed according 
to amount of consumption. Had the Enemy of the 
race racked his brains to conjure up this system it 
could not have been made more grotesque. It makes 
the right in the Property and the enjoyment of the 
Property polar opposites, — as far apart as they can 
possibly be; — the right absolutely equal for all the 
race; the enjoyment as unequal as the benefactions 
of the World's Charitable List, which we may safely 
take to be typical, unsurpassable inequality. 

The income of the People's Inheritance, — the vast 
riches which are produced every year by the use of 
the Property in Ideas, — are purely a charitable gift 
to the world. They are here, they are to be dis- 
tributed, but no living man can claim to have earned 
them. The men whose concentrated mental toil pro- 
duced these riches are dead, — and forgotten, " save 
some few clarion names." So our personified World, 

* After the amount of the consumption, the degree in which 
it is made up of articles of superfluity is the most important 
matter. For the change produced by the ideas of the People's 
Property in the processes of supplying the ordinary necessaries, — 
plain food and clothing and shelter,— has been slight in compari- 
son with the change that these same ideas have worked in the 
methods of producing the trappings of luxury and display. There- 
fore it is true, generally speaking, that of persons spending an 
equal amount of money, he who benefits most largely from the 
fruits of this Property is he who spends most for the most e^bo- 
rate luxuries; he who benefits least is he who spends most for 
the plain necessaries. 



15.4 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

— kindly, garrulous, anxious and perplexed, — must 
needs be the almoner to superintend their distribution. 
Let us credit her with the best of intentions. 

She starts out upon her rounds, and meets a 
thriving man of our middle class. " What are your 
living expenses % " she asks him. " Five thousand a 
year," he replies. " Truly a good and wise manager; 
make him an allowance of another five thousand from 
the charitable funds of the People's Inheritance," she 
says to her steward. Next she meets a highly skilled 
workman, who, she finds, spends fifteen hundred a 
year. " An honor to the ranks of workingmen," she 
says, " make him a yearly allowance of fifteen hundred 
from the funds." Her spirit is beset with doubt, 
however, when she finds that a laborer whom she next 
interviews spends only — because he makes only — 
two hundred and fifty dollars a year. " A dubious 
case; I fear he is undeserving," she sighs; " however, 
I will make him an allowance of two hundred and 
fifty dollars. I fear it will pauperize him." But no 
such doubt troubles her when she finds a poor needle- 
woman, unable to work because her eyes have failed. 
" What, not able to make anything at all ! — Has 
nothing to spend ! " she exclaims, grieved and pained 
at such unworthiness. " To try to help such cases is 
like pouring water into a sieve; I cannot draw on 
these sacred charitable funds for any such wasteful 
foolishness." And she wrathfully orders her coach- 
man to drive away from these purlieus of poverty. 

But on the familiar soil of Fifth Avenue and its 
lesser tributaries her spirits revive; she drops her 
rueful countenance and solves her problems with 
smiles and cheerful words. " My dear Mr. Brown- 



Chap. xii. THE PRESENT BENEFICIARIES. 155 

Jones," she says, '* how delighted I am to hear you 
had such a good year in Wall Street. Fortune always 
favors the strong and prudent, you know; your fam- 
ily is blessed in having such a good provider. Permit 
me to put you down for an allowance of one hundred 
thousand from these funds in my custody ; I could 
not do less for a man who is able to draw as much 
for his living expenses from the fruits of his own 
business ability." And so she runs the gamut of the 
highly and still more highly deserving, lavishing ad- 
ditional fortunes on every hand to those who can 
prove that they do not need them. 

But her joy and self-satisfaction are complete when 
she meets upon his doorstep her dearest friend and 
favorite, Mr. VanA. " You don't say you actually 
spent ten millions last year on ordinary expenses ! A 
worthy scion of a noble race. I can easily spare you 
an allowance of ten millions from my charitable funds 
of the People's Property; such claimants do not 
appear every day. Then, beside, the people really 
owe you twice as much for the magnificent exhibition 
of living on a grand scale you have given them; it is 
hard to overrate the benefits to society of such princely 
expenditures." 

— Verily, if the World keep on thinking, and also 
continue to contemplate the results of her bounty, 
she will certainly conclude some day that she has not 
yet acquired the right idea as to who are the deserving. 

Our present social organization lacks not defenders. 
From the Bible we have heard it proved that poverty 
is inevitable, for "the destruction of the poor is his 



156 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

poverty "; — but the poor in Solomon's day were not 
the heirs of our mighty Property in Ideas. And 
Jesus himself said, " The poor ye have always with 
you"; — but he spake thus to men who commanded 
only the crumbs from Nature's tables, while this 
generation has inherited the secret of control over her 
deep powers. From this same arsenal and the work of 
the same mighty armorer the apologists for our 
Millionaires have drawn the two-edged sword: "For 
unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall 
have abundance; but from him that hath not shall 
be taken away even that which he hath." Rightly 
understood this sword is indeed quick and powerful, 
but it is not the sword of the Millionaires' apologists. 
For, as anyone who will read the parable which yields 
this jeweled weapon will see, it refers to him who hath 
and him who hath not nobly used his talents or oppor- 
tunities. We do its spirit no violence when we take 
it to mean for our day and generation, " The 
Millionaire-by-Inheritance should show fruits worthy 
of his millions." 

But common and proverbial wisdom and the dicta 
of the science of wealth also rally to the defence of 
our present status. " To every man the fruits of his 
own industry." But no man of this day brought 
forth these fruits. " If a man were denied the power 
of providing for his children, he would have no motive 
to accumulate." We have found a trace of value in 
this assertion; but no man has or ever can have any 
testamentary powers over this wealth. It can only 
descend to the race; it should descend to the race 
equally, without distinction of person or condition. 
" The wide variations in the distribution of wealth are 



Chap. xii. THE PRESENT BENEFICIARIES. 157 

ordained by God, because he has made men of unequal 
powers." But "these variations are due largely to 
favor, not merit ; let us make the distribution of 
favors equal, and then we shall see how much in- 
equality God has really made. " The distribution of 
large charitable funds produces a luxurious crop of 
pauperism." But, as we have seen, the present dis- 
tribution of these funds, — in the largest quantities to 
the richest persons, — insures the maximum pauperiz- 
ing result. There is no other process of pauperizing 
that has a tithe of the reach or power possessed by the 
worship of the deity of Display with wholesale sacri- 
fices of seed-grain. 

Granting the apologists of our present status all 
their stock in trade of conservative maxims and wise 
sayings, the distribution of benefits on the World's 
Charitable List is almost indefensible. For the 
World's present distribution of the funds of parental 
solicitude, — those funds left by parents to their 
children, and in similar manner, — we have indeed 
discovered a certain tentative or permissive justifica- 
tion, resting upon the existence of an unjustifiable 
institution. But for her present distribution of the 
income of the Property in Ideas, — supposing her to 
be of mature age and sound mind, — no reasonable 
justification, or even valid excuse, seems possible. It 
is not only unjust,- — the colossal injustice of our social 
system; — it is universally detrimental and outrageous 
in its practical results. It is the apotheosis of Pauper- 
izing the Rich; in it is exhibited the culmination of 
the development, power and influence of the Beast. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE DEFRAUDED HEIRS. 

The People are defrauded of their Inheritance. It 
has been taken from them and given to various uses, 
— and largely to the worship of strange gods. 

This may seem to some of our critics a strained 
accusation against our present social system. These 
may be pleased to point out to us that all the fruits 
of the Inheritance do go to the heirs, and that prac- 
tically all of the heirs partake of the fruits. Of 
course, they say, there is some inequality in the dis- 
tribution of the fruits, but that is no fault of the 
system. Everybody has a free and equal opportunity 
of utilizing the property ; if some are more enter- 
prising than others and utilize a larger portion, the 
slothful cannot lay it to any fault of the existing 
social system. 

Of the people who are in the habit of talking in 
this strain we have noticed that, by a strange coin- 
cidence, almost all have been heirs, not only to the 
Property in Ideas which they share with all the race, 
but to a more appreciated, if less grand, heritage, — 
a heritage salable on the stock exchange. Perhaps 
some illustrations from the principles and customs of 
inheritance will appeal to their sensibilities. 

Let us begin with the tale of The Very Learned 
Man, and his Bequests to his Sons. 

" Once upon a time there was a Very Learned Man. 
He had been at one time possessed of considerable 

158 



Chap. xm. THE DEFRAUDED HEIRS. 159 

wealth, but had devoted nearly all of it to the acquire- 
ment of a library which came to be unequalecl in all the 
world in its collection of books bearing upon the es- 
pecial field of his study, — ' The Ancient Dialects of the 
Chinese Interior Provinces.' At the time of his death 
almost nothing was left of his wealth except this 
library, but this was rich in rare manuscripts and valu- 
able editions for which the collectors and museums of 
the world were thirsting. He had repeatedly been 
offered immense sums for these, but had scorned all 
offers, so deeply immersed was he in the fascination of 
his difficult researches. 

" He had three sons, one of whom had tastes like his 
own, and was, indeed, nearly as well versed in the 
literature of their common specialty; while the other 
two had developed mechanical aptitudes, one becoming 
an electrician, the other an inventor and builder of 
astronomical instruments. The last will and testament 
of the Very Learned Man provided that his property 
should become the joint property of his three sons; but 
as the great value of the library lay in its completeness, 
he directed that it should not be sold or otherwise dis- 
persed, but kept together in its entirety for the free 
and equal use of each of his children. 

" The two sons of mechanical tastes vigorously pro- 
tested against the injustice of this division, and asked 
their brother of the philological bent to consent to 
the sale of the library, and a division of the proceeds. 
They argued that he could, if he wished, retain one- 
third of the library in lieu of the money, while each of 
the two mechanicians would receive his share in the 
only shape in which it would be of any use to him, — in 
money. Thus, they concluded, the benefit of the pro- 
perty would actually be equally divided, while to keep 
the library together for the sole use of one son would 
practically disinherit the others. 

" But the investigator of Chinese dialects replied with 
lofty scorn: ' You dishonor the name of our father by 
wishing to turn the priceless fruit of his life-work into 



160 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

filthy lucre. It is your own unworthiness that bars you 
from your inheritance. Had you zealously directed 
your energies to following in your father's footsteps, you 
need not now be complaining that you are disinherited. 
Your honored father left, indeed, a noble inheritance, 
and gave you free access to its benefits; but he could not 
make you worthy of it. No injustice has been done 
you; it is because of your stupidity and sloth that you 
have failed to profit by your opportunities. Against 
stupidity and sloth the gods themselves are powerless.' " 

The atmosphere of Chinese dialects and astronom- 
ical mathematics may be considered a trifle rare for 
demonstrating propositions in applied business prin- 
ciples, so the scene of our next tale shall be laid right 
down among the people We shall call it the Tale of 
the Smith Family Eailroad. Of course it will be 
understood that the events here narrated also occurred 
" once upon a time." 

" Pleasant Valley is a rich farming country lying 
along both sides of the Pleasant Kiver as it meanders 
from its source in the northern mountains down past 
the town of Pleasanton. Its upper and partly moun- 
tainous end was first settled by an enterprising pioneer 
named Smith, who at one time owned vast tracts of 
land there, and who in his latter years grew quite rich 
by selling parts of this domain to the incoming settlers. 
But to enable him still further to develop his holdings 
he yearned for a railroad to Pleasanton. As his pro- 
ject was considered quite chimerical by the Pleasant 
Valley farmers he at last determined to carry it out 
himself ; and finally built the road entirely on his own 
resources and credit. He operated it successfully to 
the end of his life, realizing enough from its earnings 
and from the accelerated sales of his land to pay off 
the mortgage on the property, and leaving the railroad 
almost free from debt as a joint legacy to his six sons. 



Chap. xm. THE DEFRAUDED HEIRS. 161 

" Of the sons five were fairly prosperous farmers, 
living on and cultivating portions of the land their 
father had won from the wilderness. The other son, 
William, was of a more enterprising spirit, and beside 
his farm he had taken up various business ventures in 
the vicinity, all of which prospered under his guiding 
hand. He became a lumber and coal merchant at 
North Fork Station; operated a saw- and planing-mill 
at Upper East Falls; had a large stone quarry near 
Rock Hill, from which he supplied the paving-stone for 
Pleasanton; and, most important of all, employed over 
one hundred men in his plow factory at Smithville. As 
may easily be imagined he contributed a large share of 
the business handled by the Smith Family Railroad. 

" Shortly after their father's death this enterprising 
brother called a family conclave for the purpose of con- 
sidering the affairs of the railroad. He had few sug- 
gestions to make for improving the conduct of the 
road's business, which had been most ably managed by 
their father, but one change seemed to him decidedly 
needed. The father had made each of his sons pay his 
debts to the road just as any of its other customers 
did, and they had all rebelled somewhat at this penur- 
iousness, as they called it. Therefore when William 
proposed that, since the six were now sole owners of the 
road, they cease charging themselves anything for its 
services, the brothers all agreed, with decided alacrity. 
They could easily see the force of his argument, that 
it was a pure waste of time to charge themselves and 
then pay themselves, and each of them except William 
had a rosy vision of the freedom with which they would 
take pleasure trips to Pleasanton. 

" William was not of an imaginative temperament; he 
had few visions or dreams, — in fact some of his neigh- 
bors considered him dull. But he opened a new account 
in his ledger headed ' Rebates of Freight,' and the credit 
entries in his Profit and Loss account began to grow to 
unprecedented figures. His business operations also ex- 
panded wonderfully, and freight-car loads of his wares 



162 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III 

began to penetrate to regions that had not previously 
known them. Altogether he had a year of unexampled 
prosperity. As he piously remarked to a fellow-trustee 
of his local church, it was a providential mercy that he 
had been able to lay by something for a rainy day, for 
when the day came it was a downpour and no mistake! 
This referred to the shocking discovery which the 
brothers had made, when the railroad accounts were 
closed for the year, that instead of returning its com- 
fortable yearly profit, as it always had done under their 
father's management, the railroad operations actually 
showed a heavy loss, — a loss larger than the preceding 
year's profit. 

" Much unpleasant recrimination followed between 
William and his brothers when the situation finally be- 
came clear to the five. They accused him of ruining 
the business prospects of the railroad by choking it with 
his heavy freight traffic, the cost of carrying which was 
a heavy drain on the resources of the road with no 
countervailing advantage. But William rose to the oc- 
casion, as was his habit, and showed his brothers con- 
clusively that the fault was not in the arrangement 
proposed by him and accepted by them. That was 
strictly fair and mutual, he maintained ; the only trouble 
was that unaccountable variations in the amount of busi- 
ness offering to him had defeated their calculations. So 
far as chance had worked the havoc, William of course 
disclaimed all responsibility; while so far as diligence 
in business entered into the situation he was able to 
point out that the trouble was really due to their own 
default: — that if each of the five had contributed the 
same amount of traffic that he had, not only would the 
present painful scene have been avoided, but a sub- 
stantial profit would have been realized by each in his 
private business to offset the railroad's misfortunes. 
Lack of enterprise, incompetence, and sloth, William 
went on to say, accounted for a great deal of the trouble 
that some people were pleased to ascribe to injustice. 

" The cogency of William's reasoning seemed to con- 



Chap. xiii. THE DEFRAUDED HEIRS. 163 

vince, or at least, silence, his brothers for the time being; 
but it is noteworthy that the board of directors at its 
next meeting took measures to issue free passes to each 
stockholder, while requiring that stockholders' freight 
be charged for at the usual rates. Shortly after this a 
new freight tariff was promulgated which made sub- 
stantial additions to the charges upon paving-stone, 
plows, and millwork." 

A third illustration is needed to complete our view 
of the harmonies of the prevailing social theories, 
but no well-authenticated case of the kind needed is 
to be found in our archives. We shall therefore allow 
Mr. VanA. to recount a dream that recently occurred 
to him, curiously bearing upon this question; ex- 
plaining to the uninitiated that Mr. VanA.'s social 
position gives weight even to such trifles light as air. 

" I was sitting in an easy-chair in my library the other 
night, just before my time of retiring, when I was seized 
with a sudden curiosity to examine my father's will. I 
went over to the safe, took out the certified copy, and 
turned over the pages listlessly until I came to the part 
bequeathing me the Fifth Avenue house. I read this 
over hurriedly, when my eye was struck with a provision 
at the end of the item that I did not remember having 
seen before. I read it with growing astonishment. It 
was about like this: after giving me the house with all 
the proper legal phrases it went on to say: 'Provided, 
however, that any law-abiding citizen of the United 
States shall, if he choose, be entitled to claim full con- 
current rights with my said son in the use, occupancy 
and possession of the said house, its furniture and be- 
longings; always, however, respecting my son's equal 
and concurrent right to the use of the same.' 

" I had hardly recovered from my astonishment at this 
discovery when the library door opened and a crowd of 
workingmen came in. They distributed themselves 



164 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

about the tables, and took down and turned the pages 
of my rarest editions and costliest bindings. I retreated 
in disgust to the bathroom, only to find it occupied by 
a lot of dirty urchins, newsboys and bootblacks, who 
badly needed to use its facilities, but whose presence 
was none the more welcome to me on that account. 
Turning back into the hall I found a motley crowd be- 
ginning to occupy it, fingering the decorations and fur- 
niture, and some lying down on the rugs as if settling 
themselves for the night. I hurried to my chamber, 
intending to lock the door and make a last stand in 
defence of my privacy. It was apparently not invaded, 
for the crowd had not proceeded so far along the hall- 
way. But when I turned up the light and looked 
around I discovered that the bed was occupied by two 
enormous coal-heavers, who had deposited their baskets 
and shovels at the foot, and pulled the clean sheets up 
under their grimy faces. 

" This was a little too much. I seized a shovel, and 
with a scream of rage sprang forward to brain the inter- 
lopers, when — I awoke. I tell you, I said with real 
unction, Thank heaven, it is only a dream! I did not 
awaken a minute too soon. And for the next five years 
I don't want to hear any more of this talk about the 
virtue of contact with the people. I have had enough 
of both the talk and the contact." 

Reserving our right to draw a moral from these 
fables if it should become necessary at a later stage 
in our investigations, we have these observations to 
put forward as the obvious conclusions to be deduced 
from them at present. 

(1) A man's right to use property for which he has 
no use is no benefit to him. 

(2) A man's right to use property for which he 
has but a small use is but a small benefit to him; to 
a person who can make large use of it, it is a large 
benefit. The benefit depends, not upon the extent 



Chap. xiii. THE DEFRAUDED HEIRS. 165 

to which he has a right to use it, but upon the extent 
to which it fits his needs. 

(3) The mere personal use of property is but a 
small part of what we consider the rights of property. 
The real owner of property has a right not only to use 
it himself if he prefer, or if he be able, to do so, but 
to sell it to one who will or can use it if he be unwill- 
ing or unable. A Stradivarius is valuable property 
to a man who could not draw a clear note from it, 
because he can sell it to one who can avail himself of 
its value; a Chicago house is valuable to a man living 
in Boston because he can lease it to a Chicagoan. 

(4) Property rights, to be of any value beyond our 
personal ability to use them, must necessarily include 
the power of excluding others from the use and en- 
joyment of the property. With this power a property 
right commands the full use and value of the article 
owned, for if the owner cannot use it directly he can 
do so indirectly by transferring it to some one who 
can. Without this power it only commands at most 
the personal use of the article, for if the owner can- 
not use it himself he has no exclusive title which he 
can transfer to another. 

(5) A right to use property in common with all the 
race is therefore devoid of any value beyond the value 
of personal use. A man who cannot personally 
utilize his right cannot profit by it indirectly, for he 
has no right to offer any purchaser except such as the 
purchaser himself necessarily possesses. 

In the light of these principles, let us try to see 
clearly the process of practice and reasoning by which 
the apparently fair freedom of opportunity to all the 
race to use the People's Property in Ideas, really con- 



106 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

ceals a practically complete disinheritance of the bulk 
of its nominal owners. 

The People's Property in Ideas is owned by a vast 
number of owners: its benefits are utilized by a vast 
number of persons. The accurate adjustment of the 
claims of these various interests is a difficult and com- 
plicated problem. How shall it be accomplished? 

In seeking to answer this question let us further 
ask, (1) How is its accomplishment now attempted? 
(2) How are similar problems treated in the commer- 
cial world to-day? 

The answer to the first question is very short and 
plain: — No attempt is made to solve the problem; it 
is allowed to go by default. There is a general but 
rather hazy understanding that the property belongs 
freely to all the race; but there is not the slightest 
attempt made to secure evenness, fairness, or system 
of any sort in its distribution. It is thrown out to be 
struggled for as a man might throw a handful of 
pennies to a crowd of urchins, and with the same. cool 
unconcern as to its ultimate destination. 

The answer to the second question is equally clear 
and plain, but not so short and simple: — 

The adjustment of the claims of diverse interests 
in the large business operations of modern life is 
founded on a system of exact measurement. Every 
man who has stock in a corporation or a share in a 
partnership has a certain definite amount of owner- 
ship or right of participation therein. Every man 
who uses the services or facilities of a corporation or 
firm pays a certain calculated amount for certain 
measured services. Every return of profits to the 



Chap. xm. THE DEFRAUDED HEIRS. 167 

stockholders or partners is based upon a proportional 
division of the money among the shares in interest. 

This procedure has become so much a matter of 
course in all large business operations that the people 
of to-day have practically forgotten that any other 
way ever existed. Yet in our law-books there is to 
this day recognition of a method of land-holding 
which carries us back to a time when such principles 
were unknown, and when it was in harmony with the 
prevailing business methods for two or more men to 
own and use ground in common with no attempt to 
define or ascertain the use that each might make of it. 

We believe that, as a matter of fact, the only im- 
portant use which was made of land so held was for 
pasturage. This is a very simple use, and might 
admit of very simple methods ; — it might not so 
greatly matter if, when two brothers held a piece of 
land in joint-tenancy, one pastured ten and the other 
thirty cattle thereon. The owner of the ten, if he 
had all the pasture he wanted for his own cattle, 
might be satisfied without examining the question of 
the abstract fairness of the division. But it is mani- 
fest on the most cursory examination that no business 
of any complexity could possibly be conducted on 
such a plan. Until exact measurements were substi- 
tuted for these nebulous rights the modern organiza- 
tion of industry would be manifestly impossible. 

Now it is into exactly such a pasture-field as this 
that we have shaped the People's Property in Ideas. 
It is equally free to all of its equal owners, and each 
one of them can drive his herd of industrial enter- 
prises in to pasture there; and the pasture is bountiful 
enough for all. But some possess thirty cattle and 



168 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book HI. 

some only ten; while some, and these the vast 
majority, possess none at all, and are forced to tend 
the herds of their richer neighbors for hire. By rea- 
son of lacking the necessary cattle they cannot make 
any use of their pasture, and of course they cannot 
sell their privileges in this pasture, because every 
human being possesses the same privilege. They are 
practically shut out from their inheritance. 

It is here our critics kindly point out that the exclu- 
sion of the poor heir from his inheritance is his own 
fault. " Be energetic," is their advice to him, u be 
enterprising, be ambitious, be far-sighted, accumulate 
capital, rise above your fellows, and you shall gain 
your inheritance." 

But an inheritance is usually something one does 
not have to gain. We fear Mr. VanA. would have 
been surprised to the border of agitation had he 
learned from his father's will that the large fortune 
left to him was to be given into his possession forth- 
with if he would but bestir himself and fairly earn it. 
He might say with some force, " If I have to earn it, 
what's the use of having an inheritance ? " And the 
poor heir of the People's Property may be allowed to 
make the same remark concerning his alleged share 
therein. 

What use, indeed? It is a crucial question. Does 
the desperately poor man, from the lowest stratum 
of the social pyramid, benefit at all by the triumphal 
march of industry to dominion over Nature? It is 
very widely doubted; we doubt it very decidedly: 
even the employers' investigating committees evi- 
dently doubt it. They prove that, taking the higher 
grades of labor, or taking all classes of workingmen 



Chap. xin. THE DEFRAUDED HEIRS. 169 

as a whole, their wages do show an increase since the 
beginning of the Wonder Century. But if we ask 
them if the poorest of the poor have received their 
inheritance, they give us a Yankee-like answer with 
another question, Have they earned it? 

We answer, as we have given answer before to this 
question: "No; they have not. Furthermore, no liv- 
ing soul has earned a pennyworth of this inheritance. 
It comes as pure charity to whomsoever receives it. 
Men earn their wages, their salaries, even, perhaps, 
their profits, to some extent ; but no man can earn this 
heritage. The labor of bygone generations has earned 
it for all time. It comes to him, if it come at all, as 
a free gift." 

But the prevalence of this idea that the Inheritance 
must be earned as well as inherited, evidently points to 
the cardinal misapprehension that has so befogged this 
question. We refer to the belief that the fruits of 
the Inheritance are necessarily distributed to the 
various ranks of the industrial forces. This idea seems 
to have been simply accepted as an axiom. It is not, 
in the current literature of the subject, to our knowl- 
edge, either explicitly affirmed or squarely denied; — 
it is simply assumed. 

ISTow as we have shown, we think conclusively, none 
of the fruits of the People's Property in Ideas go to 
the producing forces as such, despite the current 
belief that such is the case. But the facts upon which 
this belief is founded are these: the Property mani- 
festly needs a most expensive outfit of apparatus and 
talent to enable it to exert its productive power. The 
amount of money spent, as capital and wages, for this 
outfit is so tremendous that it has evidently mon- 



170 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book ill 

opolized the people's attention; and in the meantime 
the real profits of the inheritance, vastly greater but 
not distributed in money, slip away almost unnoticed. 
In fact, the general belief manifestly is that they have 
no existence. 

Thus this money paid to the industrial forces being 
mistaken for the fruits of the Inheritance, the people 
watch to see on what principle it is distributed, and 
think they are discovering how the income from the 
Inheritance is distributed. But this gold which they 
are watching is plainly distributed as a reward for 
effort : — whether as wages, profits or interest, it is 
paid for effort, directly or indirectly. Therefore the 
inference seems plain that the only way to get this 
money is to work for it; which is taken to mean that 
the only way to realize on one's share in the Inheri- 
tance is to go to work and earn it or " make " it. 

Here we have the genesis, growth and maturity of 
the idea that this Heritage must be earned, and we 
find its natural corollary in the generally accepted 
belief that the whole Heritage is a myth. 



Based upon this popular idea that the wages of 
labor are the profits of business — that the returns from 
the Property in Ideas are to be sought among the for- 
tunes accumulated in industrial enterprises, — we have 
had much pretentious inquiry as to whether the lower 
ranks of laborers share equitably in the benefits of 
modern industrial progress, and why they are not able 
to secure a better share than now falls to their lot. And 
starting from this idea, a sapient attorney for the Mil- 
lionaires has settled the whole question for us by the 



Chap. xm. THE DEFRAUDED HEIRS. 171 

ex cathedra statement * that if labor possessed the skill 
to use this Property, it could absorb and appropriate 
it ; and, by inference, that those who can comprehend 
and do use it, are now appropriating its entire fruits. 
But these men, as we have seen, vigorously repudiate 
this statement, and assert that their task of money- 
getting is not in the least made easier by their priv- 
ilege of using the Property. And we have likewise 
seen that the fruits of the Property do go in great 
profusion to many persons who would not know an 
industrial idea if they met one. Evidently this in- 
fallible explanation does not reach the root of the 
matter. The inclusion of the World's favorites is not 
due to their competence alone, or the bulk of them 
would never be included; the exclusion of the poor 
heir is not due to his incompetence alone, for in his 
unfortunate exclusion he has the company of the 
highly competent. 

We have likened the People's Property to a pasture 
wherein all men might feed their enterprises, — if they 
happened to have any on hand. We might extend 
the idea, and say that any useful talent, power or 
knowledge which a man possesses may be considered 
his herd, and that this pasture enables great use to be 
made of such talent. But all this is very little to the 
advantage of the laborers who form the bottom 
stratum of our pyramid. They are lacking in such 
talent, as well as in the capital for large industrial 
enterprises. The growth in importance and com- 
plexity of the industrial field which is dominated by 
the People's Property not only does not yield them 
any dividends on the Property, but has no tendency 

* W. H. Mallock, " Labour and the Popular Welfare." 



172 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

to make it easier for them to obtain the wages which 
the Property disburses. 

Of course as machinery increases in complexity and 
delicacy the wages paid for its construction and over- 
sight are likely to increase. As business operations 
grow in mass and in intricacy the money prizes which 
fall to their successful managers will naturally grow 
in volume. As highly developed special knowledge 
is more largely called for in matters of detail a larger 
appropriation must naturally be made to command it, 
and these larger funds fall to the possessors of such 
knowledge. But all these changes tend to move the 
center of industrial activity ever farther from the 
workman of the lowest class, and largely diminish the 
relative importance of his efforts. It becomes actually 
harder for him to occupy profitably his modest ability 
with each increase in the amount of high ability 
demanded. 

Thus, looking at the People's Inheritance not as a 
vast wealth-producing property, — which it is primar- 
ily, — but simply as a vast market for talents, enter- 
prise and capital, — wdiich it is only secondarily, — we 
find that no advantage whatever accrues from it to 
labor of low grade, which means in general the labor 
of very poor people. Our poor heir is unable to take 
the advice of our critic to be enterprising, far-sighted, 
possessed of ample capital. He fails, therefore, to 
win riches in the field of industrial enterprise which 
the People's Property in Ideas has opened. Accord- 
ing to our critic it is here that he fails to realize his 
share of the Inheritance, and he fails because he de- 
serves to fail, — because of his sloth, lack of ability, 
and want of enterprise. 



Chap. xiii. THE DEFRAUDED HEIRS. 173 

But, as we have seen, even the successful ones in 
this competition do not here realize their share of the 
Inheritance. They find a good market for their 
talents, enterprise, capital; they amass wealth, but — 
this wealth is not their Inheritance, it is simply pay- 
ment for the value they have given. We must follow 
the investigation one step farther, — to the spending 
of the money we have just seen earned, — before we 
find the scene of distribution. Here the shares in the 
inheritance are actually handed out. We have seen 
how they vary, — to him who spends nothing, nothing ; 
to him who spends moderately, a moderate amount; 
to him who spends lavishly, a flood of wealth. The less 
one needs, the more he gets; and that one needs help 
sorely is reason for withholding his inheritance en- 
tirely. 

But our critic still pursues us with his claim that 
this is all a true merit system. " You deny," he says, 
" that a man realizes his inheritance in the reward of 
his industry, talents and capital. But it is merely a 
play upon words. You admit that he does realize his 
inheritance in the spending of this reward. This is 
so nearly the same thing that we need not quarrel 
over it. The important thing is that the Inheritance 
does finally get distributed in proportion to merit; — 
that the man who fails to get his full inheritance is 
he who fails to work effectively; that he who gets his 
share pressed full and running over is he who works 
with most energy, enterprise, foresight and capital, 
and hence with the best and most plentiful results." 

Even were it true that the funds arising from the 
Inheritance are distributed according to a pure merit 
system, this would not make the inequality justifiable. 



174 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book ill. 

Merit in our generation has nothing to do with the 
creation of these funds; they grew from the merit of 
our forefathers. The merit which is exhibited in 
industrial work is amply rewarded from the fruits of 
this industrial work. It has no additional claim upon 
the use of the People's Property in Ideas to make its 
money purchase more than it otherwise would. If 
its owners had to spend their money at a price-level 
which would admit of returning to every idea used 
in production its full commercial value, no injustice 
would be done them. On the contrary, if every such 
idea had its value duly acknowledged in the price paid 
for it by the consumer, and all the sums arising in this 
way were gathered into one grand fund to be dis- 
tributed per capita among the population, exact prac- 
tical and theoretical justice would be done in the 
division of the income from the People's Property in 
Ideas. 

But, as a matter of fact, it is far from true that this 
income is distributed according to merit. Looking 
merely at different grades of labor this may seem to 
be so; the poor labor secures a small proportion, the 
higher grade labor a larger proportion, of this income. 
But when the wages of labor, and the salaries of in- 
tellectual effort, and the gains of acute business man- 
agement, and the rewards of all activity in any form 
that we can possibly classify as merit, — when all these 
are gathered together and devoted to consumption, 
have we accounted for all the demand that goes to 
make up our Consumer? 

Par from it. Our figure will show the importance 
of the element omitted. The bulk of this element, — • 
and a tremendous bulk it is, — is composed of the re- 



Chap. xm. 



THE DEFRAUDED HEIRS. 



175 



iDcome of Large Capitalists. 




(2,400,000,000. 




(16,000 avenge per family. 


150.000 families. 


Income of Medium Capitalists. 




(1,300,000.000. 




(1,000 average per family. 


1,300,000 families. 


Income of Small Capitalists. 




.,„ , ., (600,000,000'. 
(100 average per family ' 


6,000.000 families. 


Large Professional and Business Incomes. 




(700,000,000. 
(7,000 average per family 


100,000 families. 


Medium Professional and Business Incomes and Salaries. 


(1,500,000,000. 




(1,200 average per family 


1,250.000 families. 


Minor Business Salaries and Higher Wages. 




(1,500,000,000. 




9750 average per family 


2.000,000 families. 


Medium Wages. 




(1,200,000,000. 




$400 average per family. 


3.000,000 families. 


Lower Wages. 




(900,000,000. 




(300 average per family. 


3,000,000 fimilitt. 


Unreliable Wages and Transitory Employment 
1120 avengs par family. (300.000,000. 


"t.500,000 families. 



THE CONSUMER. 

A QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS. 

THE TOTAL NATIONAL INCOME OF THE UNITED STATES (1890) DIVIDED INTO 

CLASSES, SHOWING THE NUMBER OF FAMILIES COMPOSING EACH 

CLASS, AND AVERAGE SHARE OF EACH FAMILY. 

The size of each compartment represents the comparative amount of income 
falling to each class. 

The Medium and the Small Capitalists are assumed to be also in receipt of in- 
comes from personal exertions, hence the families set down as belonging in these 
classes are duplications. The Large Capitalists are assumed to have no income 
from personal exertions. While there are numerous exceptions to each of these 
assumptions, it is believed that they represent correctly the general situation. 

These figures are based upon data given in Dr. Charles B. Spahr's " Present 
Distribution of Wealth in the United States." (See remarks upon this subject on 
the sheet of diagrams facing page 194. ) 



176 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

turn from accumulated wealth. We cannot in the 
slightest degree associate the idea of economic merit 
with the ownership of these funds as a whole. Some 
considerable part of them is composed of the legiti- 
mate earnings of living men, and these we may con- 
sider as representing merit. The main body of 
accumulated wealth, however, even in this new coun- 
try, is in other hands than those of its creators, and 
their holding of it is absolutely no guide to their econ- 
omic merit. The only inference we are entitled to 
make on this point is unfavorable; we know that the 
owners of the larger holdings are removed from all 
ordinary incentive to exhibit economic merit, and we 
know by experience that such are very likely to be 
pauperized. Yet the income of the People's Property 
in Ideas is distributed to all this wealth on the same 
terms as to the laborer and the captain of industry. 

But even the total demand for annual consumption 
arising both from the rewards of labor and the return 
to accumulated wealth comes short of showing the 
make-up of our Consumer. All existing debts are a 
demand expressed in money, and their owners hence 
share in the distribution of the income from the In- 
heritance. This element we cannot show in our 
figure because we cannot reduce it with any satisfac- 
tory accuracy to annual value. But every fall in the 
price of commodities, every rise in the purchasing 
power of a dollar, increases the value of a claim ex- 
pressed in money, and hence increases the real wealth 
of all creditors. The owners of these claims are, in 
general, the same as the owners of incomes drawn 
from accumulated wealth, and they certainly are not 
uniformly noted for the economic merit of their 



Chap. xin. THE DEFRAUDED HEIRS. 177 

careers. Yet the income of the People's Property is 
distributed to all of them as freely as to the real work- 
ers of our industrial forces, — and in far larger quan- 
tities. 

Certainly the claim that the income from the 
People's Property in Ideas is distributed in recogni- 
tion of economic merit is decidedly weak. It is 
distributed in recognition of money, and of money 
only. And the present distribution of money is, as 
we have seen, in recognition of some economic merit 
and — an intolerable deal of something else. 

Thus we find upon tracing the matter into its 
various ramifications that our poor heir of the Prop- 
erty in Ideas is kept out of his inheritance for many 
fine-sounding reasons and with many protestations of 
distinguished regard, but — he is effectually kept out 
nevertheless. The small share he gets in the profits 
from the People's Property does not compensate him 
for the increased difficulty of marketing his labor, and 
he is left outside the ranks of the conquering army 
of progress, an industrial outcast. 

It is especially and preeminently these people who 
are the defrauded heirs of the People's Property in 
Ideas. In a certain sense we may say that each and 
every member of the race is defrauded of his inherit- 
ance, for to no one is it given as an inheritance from 
preceding generations, and it is an undoubted loss to 
have the real truth of the matter veiled by confusing 
circumstances. But the more favored members of 
society are compensated for the loss of the direct bene- 
fits of their inheritance by receiving them indirectly. 
In fact, even the fairly prosperous workman probably 



178 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book ill. 

receives more indirectly than he would get by a direct 
distribution, the prosperous middle classes very much 
more, while the World almost exhausts her treasury 
in heaping these indirect benefits upon the Million- 
aires. But all that these favored classes receive in 
excess of their fair shares under a system of direct 
distribution, is filched from those least able to bear it 
and least able to prevent it. 

It is a pleasant fiction, but a very patent one, that 
these diverted funds fail to reach their owners because 
they are used to recognize economic merit. But even 
were it a palpable truth, it would mark a wide depart- 
ure from what we conceive to be their true function. 
" Nature red in tooth and claw," " the survival of the 
fittest," " the struggle for existence," — all these con- 
ceptions are eloquent of the reward of economic 
merit. But a society composed of civilized human 
beings, a society owning the bond of the brotherhood 
of the race, a society listening all these years to the 
voice of the disinherited Son of man, — such a society 
might have a fund for the nurture of merit as well as 
for its recognition. Well has* it been for most of us 
that the love that shielded our early years cared 
naught for our economic merit. Even among the 
beasts that perish parental love suspends the merit 
test. And assuredly a society that seeks enduring 
life can afford to feel the yearning of parenthood 
over its crippled children, can find time to seek the 
lost lamb, and will go far forth to meet the prodigal 
son. 

It is the attribute of parenthood that seems to us 
expressed in this boundless gift of the Property in 
Ideas to this veneration from those that are gone. It 



Chap. xiii. THE DEFRAUDED HEIRS. 179 

is the love of parenthood that society should seek to 
express to all its children by handing forth the income 
from this gift equally and freely to all the race, re- 
gardless of merit or condition. 

This, then, is the specific charge of injustice that 
we bring against our existing social institutions, — that 
they defraud the most needy citizens of their rightful 
share in the race's inheritance from past ages, and 
bestow it upon those who need it least. It is largely 
the instinctive but undefined popular recognition of 
this, we believe, that taints even the millions of the 
Self-Made Man with the suspicion of wrong, that 
moves the populace to expect gifts and bequests from 
the Millionaires as a matter of right, that incites our 
legislatures to strike at great accumulations of wealth 
by special taxation. 

Of course this is not the only injustice that mili- 
tates against our social commonweal. We have 
already somewhat fully considered a most momentous 
one, — the World's gross favoritism in the distribution 
of the funds of parental solicitude. But valid rea- 
sons forbid any radical dealing with this abuse at 
present. Then there are yet remaining multitudinous 
removable blots upon the daily course of life and 
labor, but these are of minor importance. The evil 
we are now considering, however, is a monstrous per- 
version of the simplest principles of fair-dealing, and 
of such magnitude that it seriously threatens the well- 
being of society; yet no vested interests would be dis- 
regarded, no important functions of the social body 
would suffer, were it to be utterly uprooted to-morrow. 

To uproot this evil, to abolish the Inferno, to miti- 



180 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book ill. 

gate the evils of extreme wealth, we now propose a 
specific and manifestly practicable measure of reform. 
It is to abandon the mediaeval and absurd system of 
joint-tenancy as a means for equitably distributing 
the income of the Property in Ideas, and substitute 
therefor a system of exact measurement of all in- 
terests concerned, such as is universally used in large 
business operations. This would insure that every 
person using industrially the Property in Ideas should 
pay therefor in proportion to the amount of such use, 
and that the revenue thus arising should be divided 
among the owners of the Property, — that is, all 
human beings, — in proportion to. their ownership, — 
that is, with absolute equality. 

Such a practicable reform must necessarily be 
capable of being embodied in a measure of legislation. 
As there is no body possessing the power to legislate 
for the whole race, our plan must of course suffer the 
practical abridgements resulting from its confinement 
to one country. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE REDISTRIBUTION OF THE INCOME. 

The crucial question regarding any scheme of 
social reform must necessarily be, Is it practicable? 
We may dream innumerable visions of a regenerated 
world, and lose ourselves in the ecstasy of contempla- 
tion ; but when the afflatus leaves us and we lower our 
eyes again to the common earth we find confronting 
us the same tough old problem of a world that has 
broken the hearts of unnumbered generations of re- 
formers, — perverse, stubborn, heedless of higher 
things, deaf to spiritual voices. Can our vision 
descend to the lowly task of accepting this world as 
it is, and leading it a few steps higher? 

If it cannot, it is no true vision. The guidance 
the World needs to-day is guidance for the next step. 
The reformer's vision may show him straight ahead a 
glittering series of golden steps rising one above 
another, until, like Jacob's ladder, it reaches heaven, 
and upon it the angels come and go. But the World 
sees no ladder; and the only hope of the reformer lies 
in showing her the first step right before her eyes, with 
its advantages plainly to be seen, and its height so 
moderate that it can be easily surmounted from her 
present level. 

We cannot refuse to accept this test. We should 
not be urging our plea for justice did we not believe 
it to be possible of realization. We believe that the 
world as it now is can accept our plan, put it in prac- 

181 



182 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

tice, and profit by it. We make no demands for a 
miraculous access of virtue ; we do not say, Purify the 
world for us, and we will make it a heaven of heavens. 
We embody our hope for an upward movement of 
mankind in a measure of administrative reform as 
plainly within the sphere of legislative power as the 
appropriation of money, which yet we feel confident 
will burst the bonds of many an industrial giant, and 
remove many a stumbling-block from the path of the 
World's progress. 

To discuss this aspect of our plea for justice we shall 
be forced to give its practical embodiment in some 
detail. This we shall now proceed to do. 

And yet before exposing ourselves naked to the 
shafts of our critics we may be permitted to say a 
word in deprecation of undue violence. We are very 
willing to submit our scheme to criticism on the line 
of its practicability, and equally willing to formulate 
its details so far as is necessary for the accomplish- 
ment of this purpose. But the details are not of the 
essence of our plea ; faults in the details are not neces- 
sarily faults of the conception. The practical 
arrangements for carrying out such a scheme as ours 
should be the work of men possessing special knowl- 
edge of the details involved. If incompetence at this 
stage of the proceedings debar us from a voice in the 
matter we should be withheld from discussing the 
tariff and national legislation on bankruptcy, for the 
drafting of a tariff or a bankruptcy bill is beyond our 
powers. Therefore we court criticism upon the gen- 
eral bearings of our proposal, and upon its necessary 
effects; but it will readily appear to any fair-minded 



Ch?p. xiv. THE REDISTRIBUTION OF THE INCOME. 1S3 

man that criticism directed purely against remediable 
defects in the details is a waste of ammunition. 



The Property in Ideas has been bequeathed to the 
people from past generations. But it has had no cus- 
todian, and through lack of care, and in default of 
any system of exact accounting, its immense income 
has strayed into hands unknown, been wasted and 
squandered. But fortunately the principal is intact. 
It is not subject to waste or decay; its value is im- 
perishable. We, therefore, in behalf of the defrauded 
heirs, appear in the forum of the people, the supreme 
tribunal of conscience, and pray that a trustee be 
appointed to hold and administer this Property for 
the benefit of the heirs; — to make the best disposition 
practicable of the said Property to the end that an 
income shall be realized therefrom; to collect, account 
for and hold the said income; and at stated periods to 
turn over the accrued funds so arising in equal por- 
tions to the proper possession of the rightful heirs, — 
the people and the whole people: each and every in- 
dividual soul, — without any distinction whatsoever. 

There is only one possible trustee for the whole 
people and every individual one of the people, — the 
national government. Acting under authority of this 
Court it is commissioned to collect the income from 
this Property by means of " taxes, duties and im- 
posts," and to divide it in equal portions among the 
rightful heirs " to provide for the general welfare." 

In short, it is contemplated in our scheme that the 
national government shall collect these funds under 
authority of its general taxing power, and cover them 



184 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

into a special account, to be held, accounted for and 
disbursed " as hereinafter provided." 

The two questions that would first come up for con- 
sideration upon attempting to formulate such a meas- 
ure of taxation as is here contemplated, are, What 
amount of taxes shall be levied for this purpose? and 
How shall they be levied? — i.e., upon what persons, 
acts, or things. 

To reach an answer to these questions it will be 
necessary for us to take up, and attempt to find an 
approximate solution for, a problem which we have 
hitherto evaded when it has appeared in our path: — 
the question, What is the actual income-producing 
power of the People's Property in Ideas? 

The only precedents to guide us here are those of 
incomes as derived from the industrial ideas upon 
which patents have been held. The Property to be 
administered is of exactly the same nature as these 
patent-rights, and in fact consists largely of the iden- 
tical ideas, now of course passed into the ownership 
of the race. It is open to us to propose that our 
Property shall have its value rated by the same criter- 
ion that served to determine the value of ideas pro- 
tected by patent-rights, — the amount that people are 
willing to pay for its use, or " what the traffic will 
bear." 

There is very little to be said in criticism of this 
method when applied by the private owner of a 
patent-right. It is, indeed, far more likely to result 
in his being forced to accept less than the real com- 
mercial value of his patent, than in enabling him to 
practice extortion. He has the inertia of custom 



Chap. xiv. THE REDISTRIBUTION OF THE INCOME. 1S5 

working against the introduction of his new idea, and 
to overcome this inertia is usually forced to concede 
a substantial part of the benefit of his invention to his 
customer. His tenure of the property, also, is short, 
and he must reap his harvest quickly or not at all. 
This is an additional and cogent reason for his mak- 
ing such concessions in price as will secure the largest 
immediate adoption of his idea. Altogether, it may 
be said without exaggeration that the inventor or 
owner of a valuable idea has in general been forced 
to content himself with reaping an insignificant frac- 
tion of the wealth his invention has given to the 
world, even during the few years his right is secured 
to him exclusively. 

But the results would be entirely different in the 
case of the national government as trustee administer- 
ing the whole of this vast Property in Ideas. Here 
the inertia of custom would work in favor of the 
Property, for its ideas would be already in use. 
There would be no time limit to be considered; the 
Property would remain in the possession of the people 
to all eternity unless they chose to surrender it, — a 
remote contingency. But most important of all 
would be the fact that the Property would be so 
nearly all-embracing. With the exception of the 
small fringe of new inventions still held in private 
ownership, every idea of industrial value would be 
controlled by the national government as trustee of 
the heirs, and escape from its monopoly would be prac- 
tically impossible. 

We shall be forced to revise our conceptions of 
patent-rights somewhat before we can appreciate the 
tremendous reach and importance of the ideas in- 



186 THE PEOPLES HERITAGE. Book III. 

eluded in this Property. " Broad " and " basal " 
patents are much talked of in these times, and some 
ideas that are very broad and important indeed are 
now held in private ownership. But the People's 
Property includes such foundation inventions as the 
wheelbarrow, the forge, the hammer, the use of a 
sharp edge for parting asunder, the application of fire 
to cooking, the use of levers. Compared with such 
breadth as this the broadest of modern patent claims 
is narrowness itself. What could a trustee, exploit- 
ing patent-rights based on such claims as these, pro- 
duce in the way of income? 

Evidently we are here approaching a reductio ad 
absurdum. The possession of all these ideas as 
patent-rights in one control would amount to the mon- 
opoly of living. However our ancestors of the Stone 
Age managed it, civilized man simply could not live 
without these inventions. The processes and ideas of 
civilization are the very breath of life to the modern 
world. The exclusive possessor of the right to use 
them could reduce mankind to slavery; he could make 
any demand he chose upon the user, " knowing he 
could not choose but pay." No limits could possibly 
be assigned to the extortion that could be practiced 
under such conditions, for " all that a man hath will 
he give for his life." 

But the absurdity is not so much in the value indi- 
cated for the Property in Ideas as in the attempt to 
settle such a matter by the " free contract " system. 
The question of how much oppression a man will 
endure to save his life is not within the proper com- 
petency of the bargaining process to decide. Absurd 
though it be, our first attempt to find a way of deter- 



Chap. xiv. THE REDISTRIBUTION OF THE INCOME. 187 

mining the value of the Property in Ideas is very 
much like some current scenes from the real world of 
industry. Let us not, however, reject the bargaining 
system entirely as a method of determining values; 
there is nothing to take its place. Let us merely make 
it in reality a free bargain system, and it will wisely 
determine for us. Let both parties to the bargain 
have the free choice to agree or not to agree, and let 
neither party be daunted by the prospect of imminent 
starvation or destitution in case he may see fit not to 
agree. Let the choice be, not merely, To die or not 
to die, but, To live this way or this other way. Then 
the bargain becomes for us really a divining rod. 

Therefore as a benevolent landlord might reduce 
the rent to enable his poor tenant to pay up and be 
square again, let us surrender a portion of our valid 
claim that we may be able to enforce the remainder 
in a business-like manner and without harshness. Let 
us not attempt to collect any royalty on inventions 
made and applied before the beginning of our Wonder 
Century — say the year 1770 A. D.* This would give 
an available resource for a man who should consider 
the royalty demanded on the ideas he was using too 
high, and should prefer to surrender their use rather 
than pay it. Xobody could claim that to remand an 
objector to the ideas developed before 1770 A.D. 
would be equivalent to consigning him to perdition. 
Civilization of a high order was in full possession at 
that date ; in fact, there are doubtless in our day many 

* This date is adhered to in this place for the sake of simplicity. 
It would be necessary to go a few years back of the actual year 
named to include the main inventions which marked the beginning 
of the Wonder Century. 



188 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book m. 

conservatives who would pitch upon that period as 
embodying the culmination of the Good Old Times. 

Yet even the surrender of this tremendous slice 
from the Property in Ideas would leave its commer- 
cial value almost unimpaired. The ideas developed 
before that date were many, far-reaching and import- 
ant, but they were toilsome plodders. The ideas 
developed in the Wonder Century, on the contrary, 
have made the tales of Aladdin's lamp seem tame. 
It was their wondrous power that so quickened the 
productive processes that in our day all the forces of 
large capital, wide combination and keen business 
acumen can hardly keep them in check. It was this 
wondrous power, in fact, that engendered the problem 
we are now attacking. While production was slow 
and painful, destitution seemed only natural. With 
productive powers multiplied as if by magic, destitu- 
tion should apparently have vanished utterly; and we 
are forced to have recourse to our conception of the 
Beast to explain its persistence to our day. 

But to return to the administration of our Property 
in Ideas. Limiting it for practical business purposes 
to the kernel of its value, — the ideas developed since 
1770, — we have the task of managing it greatly sim- 
plified. It would of course be still further simplified 
in practice by basing the royalties to be collected upon 
related groups of ideas, or upon the central and com- 
manding idea in each group. That the Property con- 
tains innumerable valuable ideas is a poor reason for 
making innumerable separate levies of royalty. A 
firm manufacturing a complicated machine may own 
a hundred patents covering its ideas and processes, but 
they do not exact a hundred royalties, — quite the con- 



Chap. xiv. THE REDISTRIBUTION OF THE INCOME. 189 

trary. Usually a single payment for the machine, or 
a single royalty for its use, is made to return to the 
owners of the patents their whole claim for remunera- 
tion. But this process of practical simplification of 
the details of accounting would reach its maximum 
development in government management of the whole 
Property in Ideas. Controlling practically every idea 
of industrial value, the trustee would be able to select 
for taxation the ideas of strategic value, so to speak ; 
— those whose use controls the use of subordinat3 
related ideas, — and thus to raise the maximum 
revenue obtainable from the Property under the few- 
est possible divisions of classification and with the 
minimum amount of inquisition into private affairs. 

Evidently the aim to be kept in view in public man- 
agement of such a property would be exactly the same 
as in the private management of a patent-right, — 
simply to raise the largest possible revenue from it. 
Of course some reservations must necessarily be made 
from this statement; claims of fair and honorable 
treatment are always in order. But we have already 
allowed and provided for the principal claim in this 
direction that seems likely to arise. In general the 
claims of justice to the whole race would demand that 
the property be made to yield all it is worth. That 
is to say, the royalties should be fixed at such a rate 
as would raise the largest gross sum, making due 
allowance for the fact that increased cost of goods 
necessarily lessens consumption: — the charges should 
be " what the traffic will bear." In this way we 
should make the nearest possible approach to realiz- 
ing in money the full value of the industrial portion 
of the People's Property in Ideas. 



190 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III 

Considering all these points, then, what shall we 
estimate to be the total revenue obtainable from this 
Property ? 

We have seen that of several estimates made of the 
ratio in which productive power was increased by the 
ideas of the Wonder Century, the lowest assigned to 
the new ways a power five times as great as that of 
the old ways. Now supposing this to be correct, — - 
and we believe it is very far within the truth, — mani- 
festly, if we divide the present product of industry 
into five parts, and one of these parts represent the 
product of the old way, the other four parts represent 
roughly the value of the new way. This is what in- 
dustry could afford to pay rather than return to the 
old methods. 

But equally clear is it that industry could not pay 
out any such portion of her present remuneration for 
royalties. Most of her present income goes, broadly 
speaking, to recompensing labor — (and labor here in- 
cludes profits — the wages of superintendence, and 
interest — the return to accumulated labor). If we 
were to lay a tax upon her receipts of four times their 
present amount, she would be forced to add the 
amount of this tax to the price of the goods when 
sold, and the Consumer would be forced to pay it, as 
he would of course be forced to pay any tax upon the 
processes of production. 

But this tax of four-fifths of the product of indus- 
try is evidently too high to be taken as the average. 
There is no doubt that it is a very moderate estimate 
of the extent of the power that resides in the Property 
in Ideas to increase production. But much of this 
power is exerted in producing wares that, because of 



Chap. xiv. THE REDISTRIBUTION OF THE INCOME. 191 

their unimportance, would not warrant such a rate of 
taxation, — " the traffic would not bear "the rate pro- 
posed. Much of the most ingenious modern ma- 
chinery is occupied in producing articles of pure 
frippery. Paper-collar boxes, for instance, come (or 
once came) with beautiful (apparently) carved wooden 
lids. Xow the machinery that executed this imita- 
tion wood-carving was doubtless a mechanical 
triumph, but we could not tax its output four times 
its present value: — paper collars would straightway 
betake themselves to paper boxes, and our fine carvecl- 
wood tops would cease to gladden us. In such cases, 
— and they are legion, — the maximum revenue- 
producing power would be found to reside in a com- 
paratively light tax. 

Agriculture is another branch that would fail to 
produce our estimated rate of revenue. Powerfully 
as it has been influenced by modern inventions, agri- 
culture has yet made no advance at all comparable 
with the advance in purely mechanical processes of 
production. Nature still takes the germinating seed 
through very much the same old ways, and in about 
the same old time. We should have to be content 
with a much smaller taxation than eighty per cent, for 
the agricultural industries. 

Another large part of what we must classify as pro- 
duction that would prove intractable to our revenue 
scheme is the item of personal services. The services 
of the physician, the dentist and the nurse have been 
profoundly modified by the Property in Ideas, but it 
would puzzle us to make the fact produce revenue. 
On the other hand, the services of lawyers, clergy- 
men, actors, valets and domestic servants generally 



192 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book HI. 

have been very little affected by the advance in indus- 
trial processes and ideas. Yet all this mass of per- 
sonal services must be considered as part of the gross 
product of industry : it is the only product these work- 
ers have to show for their useful labor, and on the 
other hand it is a product for which the other workers 
of society must and do pay. 

Taking all these facts into consideration in making 
our guess at the revenue producible from our Prop- 
erty, — and a guess is all that we can reach in this 
present investigation, — let us assume that on the 
whole this revenue would be about equal to the 
present money value of the production of our entire 
population, — that beside the money now paid by the 
Consumer for wages, salaries, profits and interest, an 
equal amount could be collected as royalties on the 
People's Patent-rights. This would of course double 
the average cost of articles in general, and it would 
likewise double the income of the population as a 
whole. But this new increment of income would be 
distributed with absolute equality to every human 
being owning allegiance to this government. The 
resulting change in the distribution of incomes would 
be most momentous, and to this we now invite atten- 
tion. 

The gross annual income of our nation of about 
sixty-three million souls (1890) seems to be generally 
estimated at about ten and one-half billion dollars. 
To reach round numbers, let us take sixty-five million 
as the population, and ten billion, four hundred mil- 
lion dollars as the gross income, giving us an average 
of one hundred and sixty dollars per head. If these 
figures seem shockingly small to those unacquainted 



- 




1 H 

>-0 <X> 



ia ft. 

ig GO 



3fe hj 

g" B 





APPROXIMATE DISTRIBUTION OF INCOMES IN THE DOTTED STATES 




PRESENT STATUS 


i-i;oi'osEit KKMisrmmi'noN 




B .,»,,o»,.»_ 


[SCOMG 


Adding Iscomi prom 

Till l'l I'll 1.' ■■ I'll. Tl. Ill 1" IN ll'I.AS 


Reoucbd ti> Terms ov 


— 


— 


Numtx-r 


■ n.livi.Uiul 
A.Ulil.iii 


Total 


liulhidiuil 

[ 11 00 III W 


ol i 10 




,_ 




DEii T, T „„C 




— to SCO 


835 


,5,000,00! 


SS26.000.00I 


5160 


52,400,000,000 


8108 


(0,025,000,000 


880 lo 8110 


107.50 


$1,482,500,000 


POVBHTY . 




SCO lo 5125 


585 


st.ooo.ooo 




SIG0 




Kir, 


(8,575,000,000 


$110 to $142.60 


5122.60 


8-1,287,500,000 


COMSOHT . 




?l25toS250 


8176 


10,000,000 


81,760,000,001 


5160 




$335 


1,350,000,000 


8142.60 to $208 


8107.60 


81,075,000,000 


FitosreiuT 




8250 io 5750 


SM50 






51iii) 


fKO.000,001 


8010 


82,185,000,000 


S205to 150 


,11,011 


$1,002,600,000 






-7f-rl I-. v.'.W 


11,800 


1,200,000 


51,600,000,001 


5100 


192,000, 


-i.iiii 


1,002,000,000 


tustoti.au 


$706,00 


1810,000,000 


Uaan . 




52,500(0 $10,000 


$6,000 


250,000 


81,260,000,001 


8100 


$40,000,000 


88,100 


'. 1,000,001 


(1,830 to $6,080 


■'.,-■(, .IN 


$045,000,000 


SomFLW 




510,000 upiviirrts 


315,600 


50,000 


5775,000,00. 


L00 


: 8,000,001 


816,000 


5783,000,001 


s. r i,USt) ii|iwiiril» 


*7s:itu« 


8301,600,000 






8160 


05,0»,0O. 




5160 


5.0,400,000,000 


$m 820,800,000,001 




8100.00 


(10,400,000,000 


Y. Crowell 


^rt:^::: ;:::;::■:;; l ;:;:.: , ; l ;. '";::,':' v:!'. l: , K 


'..." ''v; :;■" 


U : " , "'''' " " '," |c" ..'!"". ' 


, ' ..... I.,' ■ .■I.II.7I',. .. 1 J. 1... ..1 M 












*" " k,(l 


. Dr. Spnbr.nod ID Ibel I. res wore Approved liy Win. Certain IHluol orHlcmnia will. * i HI ml mogupon mo 


„„„,:,:,: 


bonotl .in..' 'i» -i.i..i. Irnjod upon overage iudli'Mual, »ol flMiUg Inoomoj, Dr. Spnhr's atntl 11 i Ij In ii 

.otuoli roles divided by luborol lUodlrcol liicome-rocolvo™, i loti.nl hi .1I.-1.I..I l.v III. number or Die bonotit 




nrioathoroof. rhuiin 


i„eonu>ree 


.. family of sis living on n iln s le Income of 83,000 pot noiuiiu, tbo overage Income mnild bo 5500 pot nnnnm, nlluougb Uioro mn only ouo noliiol 
„cr. 



SUPERFLUITY 



Chap. xiv. THE REDISTRIBUTION OF THE INCOME. 193 

with such matters, they are nevertheless substantially 
accurate, as the reasonably close agreement of differ- 
ent estimates shows; and their smallness is a matter 
we must face. But it must be remembered that this 
includes all minors as sharers in the division, so that 
the average income of a family of five would be about 
eight hundred dollars per annum. It is on this very 
moderate income that the average citizen must live, 
and rear his sons and daughters, and for every excess 
over this amount which we find enjoyed by the 
World's favorites and by the energetic and capable we 
shall find a falling off even from this very moderate 
standard suffered by the less fortunate. 

ISTow the results of the equal distribution of the 
Income from the Property in Ideas would be sub- 
stantially this: — to each person's present income 
would be added this average income of one hundred 
and sixty dollars per year. But the actual value 
of this gross income would in effect be diminished 
one-half by the general doubling of average prices. 
Rated in purchasing power as compared with the 
present, therefore, each man's income would be equal 
to one-half of his present income plus one-half of the 
average income. Thus everybody's income would be 
increased somewhat in terms of money, but in pur- 
chasing power all incomes above the average would 
be reduced, and all those below the average increased. 
The general leveling effect of this measure will be 
seen at a glance by reference to the accompanying 
diagrams and the tables upon which they are founded. 

The diagram showing the present distribution of 
incomes ranges from actual zero upon the left, 
through a long stretch of slow upward slope near the 



194 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

levels of Destitution and Poverty, and a quickening 
upward slope past the levels of Comfort, Prosperity, 
and Ease, to the scaring pinnacle of Luxury and Super- 
fluity. But in the diagram showing the effects of our 
proposed redistribution of Income we have lifted the 
whole population above the line of Destitution, and 
while our mountain pinnacle shows a less command- 
ing height than before, our Millionaires can take com- 
fort in the fact that it has not vanished. In fact every 
variation in the present distribution is followed at a 
discreet distance by our new arrangement, and we 
dare assert that the diminished range of our scale is 
yet ample and more than ample to give play to all 
the inequality that God has made in the economic 
merits of different men. 

A leveling process, to be sure, and yet not a level- 
ing process in the ordinary sense of the term. It is, 
in truth, rather a process of liquidation, — and only 
a partial liquidation at that. We have indeed made 
our Millionaires pay a part of their debts to the 
People's Property in Ideas, but we have also made 
everybody else pay his similar debts, and it is only 
because the Millionaires' debts were the largest that 
they had to part with the most money in the process. 
Then we have taken money from the fund thus 
created to give each individual of the destitute classes 
his proper share in the race's Inheritance, and thus 
have lifted them all out of the quagmire of Destitu- 
tion ; but we have given each Millionaire, and each 
man of every degree, as was his right, an exactly simi- 
lar share in the Inheritance. We have laid hands on 
no man's earnings ; we have not in the least repudi- 
ated the maxim that " Every man has a right to the 



Chap. xiv. THE REDISTRIBUTION OF THE INCOME. 195 

fruits of his own labor." We have not attempted to 
level society; we have left it with the free and living- 
inequality wherewith God created it. But we have 
struck at the inequalities of our present shares in the 
common Inheritance, and have maintained that all 
men are created equal heirs of the free gifts which 
have come to men of our day from the labor of bygone 
generations. 

Before taking up for consideration the general 
effects of this redistribution of income, let us put into 
more definite shape our proposals for securing the 
management and distribution of the revenue from the 
Property. It is difficult to discuss a practical measure 
that is embodied in pure generalities. 

To distribute the income from this Property as 
proposed it would be necessary first of all to have an 
accurate registry of all the people. The local offices 
where this distribution would be conducted would thus 
naturally become offices for the registration of all 
births and deaths. It would evidently be only a step 
beyond this to have it made also a registry for mar- 
riages, and thus have a uniform system for the whole 
country of officially registering these vital statistics. 
Few persons, we think, will deny the desirability of 
this incidental result of our plan. 

To secure a complete registration of the people at 
these offices would evidently be extremely easy. No 
census machinery would be necessary to go out and 
compel them to come in. It would naturally be made 
a necessary prerequisite to a man's sharing in the 
income of the Property that he register; — and we 
dare assert that the whole Dopulation would forthwith 



196 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE Book HI. 

register, without further persuasion. The necessary 
safeguards would of course be thrown around this 
process in the shape of requiring full evidence as to 
the participant's identity, and guarantees, if de- 
manded, against fraud. Each person would bear the 
burden of establishing his own identity, and comply- 
ing with the requirements of registration. 

The supervision of these offices of registry and dis- 
tribution would necessarily be to a certain extent 
judicial in character. Beside passing upon the suffi- 
ciency of evidence concerning identification and dates, 
the register would probably be charged with discre- 
tionary duties in relation to the shares of minors, and 
would thus exercise in a degree the jurisdiction be- 
longing to orphans' or probate courts. A natural 
extension of these powers would include provision for 
retaining the shares of spendthrifts, drunkards, crimi- 
nals, and defectives generally, at the instance of those 
legally dependent upon them. The decision of the 
register in these matters would necessarily be subject 
to review by a higher court, upon appeal. 

To this registry office would come at stated divi- 
dend days, or as soon thereafter as pleased them, 
each and every citizen of the country, to draw his (or 
her) dividend. He would draw it in the same gen- 
eral manner as a present-day railroad dividend, and 
subject to the same necessary incidents and precau- 
tions. It could if necessary be paid in check or cer- 
tificate of deposit as well as in cash, and the dividend- 
receiver who got his check by mail could endorse it 
over to his grocer if he lacked a bank account. If 
Mr. VanA. deemed it beneath his dignity to appear 
at the registry office in person, his secretary or footman 



Chap. xiv. THE REDISTRIBUTION OF THE INCOME. 197 

could draw it for him. Of course it may be asserted 
that people of quality would turn up their noses at 
these dividends as being simply charity, but we doubt 
the enduring quality of this disdain. We stake our 
reputation for understanding human nature upon the 
assertion that within five years Mr. VanA.'s financial 
agent would have instructions to collect his income 
regularly, and would do so; and that the same would 
be true of the whole social stratum which he rep- 
resents. 

But no compulsion is contemplated here. If a 
man neglected to draw his dividend it would be held 
for him a certain time, and reasonable notice given; 
and still failing to be claimed it would be covered 
again into the general fund and would go to augment 
the shares of those who did prize their Inheritance. 
Our only desire here is to show that the rich would 
be certain to claim their shares in most cases, and this 
of itself would be sufficient to establish the fact that 
no stigma, real or imaginary, would attach to it. This 
is an indispensable prerequisite to procuring solid 
benefits from charity and avoiding pauperizing effects. 



The collection of the revenue would seem to be a 
task of entirely different character, and more properly 
intrusted to the regular collectors of internal revenue. 
Nothing more than an increase of force in this de- 
partment as now organized would be necessary, — and 
probably a comparatively small increase. The col- 
lection of revenue is difficult, not in proportion to its 
amount, but by reason of its detail ; and the revenue 
from the People's Property, arising principally from 



198 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

a few groups of foundation ideas, would not neces- 
sarily involve a great amount of detail work. 

It goes without saying that the revenue from the 
whole country would be counted as one fund, and 
distributed in equal sums among the whole popula- 
tion, leaving to the local registry offices merely the 
paying over of the individual shares. To distribute 
in the city districts all the revenue there collected 
would utterly contravene the principle upon which 
we are working, and would result in an inequality of 
places as bad as the present inequality of persons. 
Besides, it would result in the whole country trying 
to flock into the very largest cities, with results highly 
detrimental to the welfare of the social body as a 
whole. 

The national fiscal year would probably be the best 
division of time upon which to base calculations. 
The total revenue accruing in any one fiscal year, the 
total average population, and the resulting distributive 
shares, would be calculated as soon after the close 
of the year as possible, and would become payable at 
a date as early as would admit of the calculations 
being completed. But it would be unwise, in fact 
impossible, to allow the accumulation of such a reve- 
nue for over a year. It would therefore be paid out 
in monthly advance payments substantially as fast as 
it accumulated, simply leaving to the end of the fiscal 
year the determination of the exact balance due. 

Even this measure would probably leave a surplus 
constantly on hand. As many persons would prefer 
to allow their shares to accumulate for a year, each 
drawing his portion in one lump sum, the amount of 
funds left undistributed would probably always be 



Chap. xiv. THE REDISTRIBUTION OF THE INCOME. 199 

large. It would of course be absolutely inadmissible 
to allow these to lie in the treasury vaults. A billion 
dollars abstracted from the circulating medium of 
the country would create a problem of no mean mag- 
nitude. Of course the manifest solution of the prob- 
lem would be to place the funds where they would 
immediately pass out to the industrial world again. 
This would be accomplished either by depositing 
them in banking institutions, or preferably by loan- 
ing them out on time or call loans, properly secured. 
The average rate of interest obtained could then be 
credited on the deferred payments of individual 

shares. 

A wise decentralization of these funds would be 
secured by keeping them entirely in the local registry 
offices, thus creating a considerable loanable fund in 
each local centre. If it be urged that this would make 
the local register rather a banking officer than a magis- 
trate, we may reply that the judicial rather than the 
commercial banking idea would properly rule in the 
placing of these funds. Xo effort would be made to 
obtain high interest; absolute security would be the 
sine qua non. This could be secured even in very 
poor districts by joining several borrowers in one 
bond; and the possibility of securing even limited 
funds in this way would be a great help to enterprise 
in rural neighborhoods. 

It will readily be noticed that, although we must 
necessarily rely on the centralized power of the 
national government for the carrying out of our plan, 
the details we have here given, and the general effect 
of our redistribution of Income, all tend rather in the 



200 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

direction of localization of government functions than 
otherwise. In fact, the tendency to excessive central- 
ization and the tendency to excessive inequality seem 
to us to be one and the same thing. While it is im- 
possible to ignore the necessary functions of central- 
ized power and responsibility, and while it would be 
highly desirable even to have these extended in some 
particulars, we yet believe that the opposing influences 
should be carefully maintained. The undue tendency 
of population to centralize in the cities seems to us to 
follow and depend on the undue tendency of wealth 
to centralize in the very rich. 

Both of these over-developed tendencies would, we 
think, be greatly weakened by the recognition of a 
great wealth-producing power which is absolutely un- 
affected by centralizing influences. The Property in 
Ideas could not be in the least bound to any one 
locality, and while its use would necessarily follow 
wealth and population, its fruits would be absolutely 
free to follow its owners. It would be strange in- 
deed if this should not prove to be a powerful agency 
for restoring the waste places of our rural and village 
life; and this, too, not at the expense, but to the equal 
gain in welfare, of our overcrowded cities. 

We hope the foregoing details, whatever may be 
their quality in other respects, are sufficiently realistic 
to enable us to be understood in discussing the work- 
ings of our plan as if it were a present or an imminent 
reality. To this let us now address our attention. 



CHAPTEK XV. 

A NEW CHARITY OF EQUALITY. 

The redistribution of the income from the People's 
Property in Ideas gives us a society whose salient 
feature is an universal Charity of Equality, ranking 
among our Medium Charities in the size of its indi- 
vidual gifts. It is in this one measure that we have 
embodied our hope for the uplifting of the race, so 
far as practicable governmental action can now secure 
it. It is from this that we must show the fruits of 
peace and good-will on earth; with this most simple 
spell we must throw our Beast into a charmed sleep 
of a thousand aeons. Are we expecting, are we under- 
taking to show, too much? 

Apparently, yes. Eor one thing we have omitted 
to reform. We have found no specific to change 
human nature. Our reconstructed world contains the 
same faulty, erring human hearts now so prone to 
harbor hate, envy, covetousness, and all the rest of 
the evil tribe. But let us not forget that it also con- 
tains the same true, loving, charitable, enduring, be- 
lieving human hearts whose savor to-day contends 
with and prevails over the reek of our charnel-houses. 
It is these latter hearts that have so long borne the 
brunt of a stern and doubtful fight; and it is they, 
and not the trifling reinforcements we can now lend 
them, to whom we must render the honor of victory, 
if perchance our eyes may be blessed to see it. 

But let us not forget that we are still on Mother 



202 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book ill. 

Earth, and right down among the people. We are 
taking our Utopia in homoeopathic doses, and are not 
yet sure we want more of it even if it prove harm- 
less. We are very willing to postpone our experience 
of heaven if we can only get an earth that gives some 
signs of kinship with the divine. We shall not rebel 
if humanity still show a great deal of human nature; 
we are willing to allow people to think first of them- 
selves, so they be decent selves. 

In short, we have not all been totally changed, we 
have simply come into our inheritance. Many a 
young reprobate has been permanently sobered when 
headship and responsibility have fallen upon him. 
And now the crown of universal opportunity has de- 
scended to the race; may we not safely defy all the 
powers of darkness to wrench this lineal guerdon from 
us, or cheat us of its fruits ? 



A deluge of Seed-Grain! Every man, woman and 
child dowered with the means of self -development! 
An upward path starting at every doorstep! For 
even the humblest, a future without a frown! What 
shall be done with these glorious possibilities? 

Here our critic kindly brings us back to hard facts. 
" What shall be done with them, do you ask? What 
will be done with them, indeed? I will tell you. 
Every man will sit upon his doorstep and gaze con- 
tentedly upon that upward-leading path, and mean- 
while cheerfully devour his store of seed-grain. And 
when it is all gone he will say unto himself, I will 
arise and go unto the registry office, and will say unto 
the register, Lo, I have no seed-grain. Give thou 



Chap. xv. A NEW CHARITY GF EQUALITY. 203 

unto me from out the public store, for verily there 
is no end unto the riches thereof." 

Xow being right down among the people, and hav- 
ing found no specific to change human nature, we 
have in these forecastings but one lamp by which our 
feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. 
What is the verdict of experience on this point? As 
a matter of fact, does our critic give a just statement 
of the way people under such circumstances do act? 

We have no doubt that even to people in no way 
under bonds to be apologists of the Millionaires our 
plan will at first blush seem wildly impracticable. 
We shall be reminded of the effects of government 
distribution of corn among the Romans; of the at- 
tempt of the old English poor-laws to compensate 
workmen who received very low wages, and of the 
terribly productive bounty it offered for illegitimate 
children; of the sickening trail of pauperism marking 
the way of even Mrs. B.'s thoroughly-investigated 
charitable routes. Surely such unrestrained lavish- 
ness would be unutterably disastrous; it would make 
all the poorer classes think that the primal curse of 
Cain had been lifted, and that the public crib had 
finally supplanted the need of wearying toil. 

We think ourselves that our plan is impracticable, as 
the World rates practicability: — not quite so imprac- 
ticable as the Sermon on the Mount, but more so than 
any serious proposal of innoA^ation since the organiza- 
tion of the movement for the abolition of slavery. 
But this simply means that the World is not familiar 
with it; impracticability is the first step toward actual 
acceptance, and progress from this to the later stages 
is often very rapid in our day. We should not be 



204 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

seriously proposing as a remedy for a deep-seated 
disease any measure which did not at first blush appear 
revolutionary. The real impracticability of our 
scheme, however, consists of the difficulty which cer- 
tain hoary abuses will find in living peacefully under 
its dominion; and this is an impracticability which, 
with all imaginable disposition to be conciliatory, we 
shall yet attempt to preserve to the best of our ability. 

But however impracticable our measure may be, of 
one great fault it is most assuredly free, — it has no 
pauperizing tendency. All our critic's historical par- 
allels fail him here, — this is no Roman distribution 
of corn, no state premium on unthrift and unchastity, 
no round of condescending doles. Let our critic 
bring up his instances, that we may lay them side by 
side with our measure, and show him where the re- 
semblance disappears. There is only one true parallel 
to our redistribution of the income from the Peo- 
ple's Property in Ideas, — the Medium Charities, 
which we investigated at the outset of our search. 

If our critic will now analyze his horrible examples 
we think he will find one fact characteristic of all of 
them, — they all place a premium upon shiftlessness, 
and penalize the exhibition of foresight and energy. 
If the poor workman will only get very poor he will 
be rewarded with a pension; while on the other hand 
if he display any ability to become again self-support- 
ing he is punished by having his pension stopped. 
Many a man has been seduced into pauperism by the 
rewards attached to the step; many a poor recipient of 
state bounty has been effectually scared out of at- 
tempting to escape from his pauperism by the threat- 
ened pains and penalties. 



Chap. xv. A NEW CHARITY OF EQUALITY. 205 

This feature is, we believe, invariably exhibited by 
all branches of the Charity of Condescension, and it 
is in itself almost a fatal weakness. To give a man 
money because lie needs it, is almost necessarily to pau- 
perize him. All our wise rules and insight into the 
future will hardly save our charitable lists from dis- 
astrous results if we make this first tremendous mis- 
step. The contrasted error, to give a man money 
because he doesn't need it, is almost as bad; it differs 
from the former as cheerful irresponsibility differs 
from malicious mischief. But either error is sufficient 
to remove the system guilty of it from the ranks of 
really wise charities. 

The characteristic method of the Medium Charities 
shows us the only right way, — to give because the re- 
cipient has an honorable claim upon the gift, irrespec- 
tive of need or the opposite, — and to give moderately. 
Then, when a man has honorably received his gift, 
let him freely use it on his own responsibility to sup- 
ply his need. This is the true method for giving 
without pauperizing; the adoption of this will make 
unnecessary the World's cumbrous and futile ma- 
chinery of lists and almoners and strict investigations. 
This cuts at one stroke the Gordian knot over which 
the church and society, parliaments and poor-law 
boards, economists and philanthropists and all the 
generous-hearted have blindly fumbled for centuries. 

This is also the method of our redistributed In- 
come. Right here is the feature of our scheme that 
our critic needs to study before he rushes his historical 
parallels up for our instruction. Here is the reason 
that the recipient of our new Charity of Equality will 
not simply sit on his doorstep and devour his seed- 



206 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book ill. 

grain, — because we have stopped the payment of that 
time-honored performance. Our critic of course pic- 
tures him as operating under the present regime, — 
as being entitled to a new dole of charity if he can 
only consume his present dole and get very poor again. 
But our register will of course promptly inform him 
that there is now no provision of funds for needy 
cases,— that all the wealth in his custody is income, 
belonging in severalty to its several owners. And 
before another dividend-day comes round our recip- 
ient will probably discover that his present income is 
not forfeited even if he go to work and earn more. 
Thinking upon all which, we opine, he will ultimately 
reach the conclusion that elegant leisure is now fallen 
upon evil days in this country. 

There is still another reason why doorstep-sitting 
will not be popular under our new regime, — we have 
abolished the social consideration attaching to it. 
Those who think that all of our present destitute 
classes would dream their lives away in a care-free 
paradise if once the goad of hunger were removed, are 
viewing our new conditions against the assumed back- 
ground of the Inferno. But the assumption is in- 
valid; under our new conditions the Inferno is no 
more. A study of the significance of this fact may 
reassure some of the doubters. Our friend Colonel 
M., of Kentucky, for instance, has had some ex- 
perience on this point which he thinks casts light on 
the question. 

" You know that girl Sally Washington," he says, 
" the daughter of my old slave Pete. Well, she used 
to be as good a hand in the cornfield as any man on 
the plantation. But last fall she got a place in Cin- 



Chap. xv. A NEW CHARITY OF EQUALITY. 207 

cinnati, and came back in June with sixty dollars 
saved up. That settled her; she thought she owned 
the county. She set up in business as a lady, and has 
been keeping it up ever since. She walks around the 
cornfield in bright purple (without much fine linen, 
however) to show herself off to the field-hands, and is 
deeply envied by the whole community. When her 
last cent is gone she'll go to work again, but until then 
she's rich as Croesus." 

Cases like this are probably within the knowledge 
of all who are familiar with labor of the lower grades, 
and they are very freely quoted to point the moral 
that it is useless to try to raise these people. But the 
moral they really point is, we think, very different. 
The reason such a slight elevation turns their heads is, 
that they calculate their height from such a low 
datum. Of course when Sally Washington has sixty 
dollars she can indulge the same feelings of exclusive- 
ness and pride in social standing that Mrs. VanA. 
gratifies with her two-hundred-thousand-dollar ball; 
and it is just as reasonable to expect the one as the 
other to do any useful work while swayed by these 
sentiments. 

But this does not prove that only hunger can move 
the poor to exertion, — quite the contrary. So far as 
it goes it proves to us very conclusively that human 
nature is much the same in high and low; — that it 
turns to seek some ideal as surely as water seeks its 
level; that there is no human being who will not work 
more effectively for an ideal than to satisfy hunger. 
And in a society such as ours, where activity is almost 
universal, every one not driven by destitution is pur- 
suing an ideal of some kind, rational or irrational. 



208 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

noble or ignoble. By abolishing the Inferno and 
providing seed-grain for all we should greatly raise 
the necessary level of these ideals, — should make it 
impossible for anyone, millionaire or laborer, to gloat 
over his fellow-mortals merely because he could live 
without working. This condition would now be the 
absolute minimum of social position; and men would 
strive to rise above this level with the same intensity 
that they now devote to inferior ideals, and with far 
more intelligence and effectiveness than hunger can 
ever evoke. 

Now if our critic will withdraw his doleful prognos- 
tications and historical parallels we will consider the 
only true parallel to our redistribution of Income, — 
our previously considered Medium Charities. From 
these we may easily discover what is the verdict of ex- 
perience on this point. And with these cases in our 
mind's eye let us ask if our critic's pleasant tale be a 
just statement of the way people in receipt of such 
incomes, and under such circumstances, do act. Do 
our middle classes make a practice of devouring their 
inherited seed-grain and of serenely asking for more 
when this is gone? Do the inheritors of small patri- 
monies as a rule forget the future and waste their 
seed-grain in riotous living? 

Our critic will hardly maintain it. Of course, see- 
ing that no class is perfect, he can collect horrible in- 
stances if he be so minded; but he knows perfectly 
well, as we know, and as all the world knows, that the 
middle class as a whole is typically the thrifty class, — 
thrifty of both wealth and time. If historical par- 
allels be his forte let him produce an instance of a 
class of small inheritors of wealth, such as the French 



Chap. xv. A NEW CHARITY OF EQUALITY. 209 

peasantry, who have as a class either wasted their in- 
heritance or allowed it to keep them from exerting 
themselves. And while he is hunting this precedent 
we may proceed with our discussion. 

It may very fairly be urged that our distribution 
would place money in the hands of many to whom it 
would be absolutely new, and that these would almost 
certainly waste it, with great harm both to themselves 
and others. " It will take more than medium-sized 
gifts to furnish a parallel to your Medium Charities," 
some one might point out to us; "it will take also a 
duplicate of your middle classes. But you propose to 
give these gifts to the poorest of the poor, — people 
who utterly lack the hereditary training in thrift 
which is so fully possessed by your middle classes. 
This is Hamlet without the prince of Denmark, — a 
parallel with the essence of the parallelism left out." 

Let us as gracefully as we may acknowledge the 
large amount of truth in this objection. It is very 
true that our thrifty middle classes are a necessary 
part of the favorable showing of our Medium Chari- 
ties. It is most sadly true that of the very poor so 
many have been pauperized, and so many more pre- 
pared for pauperization, by our ultra-cautious policy 
of withholding, that much waste will be sure to fol- 
low our new distribution, — at first. For it will just 
as surely follow that the waste will in time, — and no 
very long time, — work its own cure. The redistribu- 
ted Income under our plan will train its recipients to 
thrift just as our present middle classes have been 
trained, — in the stern but effective school of ex- 
perience. They will waste their seed-grain to their 



210 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

own loss; they will see their wiser comrades using 
theirs to their advantage; and they will slowly but 
surely imbibe the truth that there is now no premium 
on the waste, no penalty on the utilization. 

" But think of the horrible, wicked waste in the 
meantime," says our critic, almost frenzied at the 
thought. " The idea of teaching the thriftless thrift 
by giving them good money to waste in the process of 
learning! The plan is wild, not to say crazy. ]^o 
man has a right to waste so much of the world's wealth 
in teaching himself thrift." 

We cordially assent to the latter dictum, — if our 
critic can show us a cheaper way of teaching thrift. 
We do not wish to teach thrift by wasteful methods 
any more than we would forsake the railway for the 
stagecoach. But the problem is not a new one, and 
the waste not a new waste. For lo these many years 
the funds of the Major Charities have been turned 
over in huge quantities year by year to the inexper- 
ienced and the careless to be wasted, — and yet our 
critic has never grown frenzied in thinking upon this 
wrong. It has, in fact, often occurred to us that a 
cheaper way might be found of training these wards 
of the Major Charities to thrift. But thrift is a pearl 
of great price, and if it be finally secured we are 
hardly justified in calling large expenditure therefor 
a wicked waste. As a matter of fact, however, the 
wasted seed-grain of the Major Charities does finally 
secure — not thrift, but multiplied waste, even unto 
infinity. It needs not such supersensitiveness to 
waste as our critic has manifested, but merely ordi- 
nary consistency, to see this. But consistency is evi- 



Chap. xv. A NEW CHARITY OF EQUALITY. 211 

dently a jewel among the Millionaires' apologists, 
judging from its scarcity. 

Therefore until our critic can show us a cheaper 
way of teaching thrift than by experience we shall 
continue to advocate the old method, for this does un- 
doubtedly teach the thrift, even if the cost be great. 
And the method we have advocated will at any rate 
insure this, — that the heavy cost shall be incurred to 
some purpose, and not in cultivating that culmination 
of unthrift, — the sacrifice of seed-grain upon the altar 
of Display. 

On thinking over the matter our critic finally con- 
cedes for argument sake that the poor may finally 
learn a little thrift after wasting vast sums of money. 
" But one thing," he says, " is certain, — you may in 
the end teach the poor not to waste their money, but 
you will never again get them to exert themselves 
strenously. You have cut the nerve of their capacity 
for intense exertion. This nerve is hunger. You 
have made it possible for them to be lazy and still fill 
their stomachs. That ends their usefulness; no other 
spell exists that can thrill their sluggish brains. 
Henceforth for them life is a dream, — a waiting for 
something to turn up." 

A touching threnody, indeed, for our Inferno! 
Verily, blessings brighten as they take their leave. 
Hitherto we have not been led to suspect how sweet 
were the uses of this form of adversity. How often, 
on the contrary, have we seen Mrs. B. and the lesser 
lights of her circle take the vows of a new crusade 
and start forth in all their panoply to extirpate ex- 
cessive poverty. How often have they bravely 



212 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

grappled in the darkness with the dread Beast of our 
quest, and dealt him mighty blows even while his hot 
breath seared their cheeks. And shall we now be told 
that the contest was not to the death? — that they 
fought as honorable foemen? — that the crusaders' 
honor has been amply satisfied by drawing a drop of 
blood from the Beast's little finger? Is it true that 
Mrs. B. after all cherishes the Inferno? — that she 
thinks carefully-investigated charitable lists and all 
that sort of thing well enough, but that nothing equals 
a keen appetite for making the laboring man spry? 

We fear it is only too true. We fear our prevail- 
ing social philosophy leans heavily on the Inferno, — 
that it depends on hunger to furnish a large part of 
the motive power for its productive machinery. We 
fear that our millionaires and self-made men and 
people of quality generally, and even our prosper- 
ous middle classes, agree with our critic that the poor 
will not work on a full stomach.* They have a ph.il- 

* Even so fair-minded an economist as Prof. Francis A. Walker, 
who might with some justice be described as a champion of the 
cause of the lower grades of labor, permits himself to state this 
view with brutal frankness in his consideration of the question 
of Pauperism. " Why is it that the laborer works at all ? " he 
asks; and answering himself he states as a " very obvious truth " 
— " clearly that he may eat. If he may eat without it he will not 
work." (Political Economy, page 359, edition of 1888.) Yet else- 
where in the same work he amply commits himself to the support 
of our present thesis. " A reason . . . for the higher efficiency of 
the laborers of one class or nation is found in greater cheefulness 
and hopefulness growing out of higher self-respect and social am- 
bition." " The stimulus of the lash fails to command the facul- 
ties which instantly spring into action under the inspiration of 
an ample reward. Fear is far less potent than hope in evoking the 
energies of mind or body." " Much of the indolence we have 
been accustomed to iegard as constitutional ... is due simply to 
the absence of incentive." (Ibid., pages 53, 54, 55.) Apparently 



Chap. xv. A NEW CHARITY OF EQUALITY. 213 

osophy of this belief which deals with hunger and 
the other ills of destitution as " incentives." " Only 
give a man enough incentive to exert himself," they 
say, " and he will do the rest." Of course an incen- 
tive means something one has not, but wants; and as 
the victims of the Inferno have nothing and want 
everything their incentive is evidently sufficient to 
move mountains. Hence behold what a magnificent 
accumulation of motive power is available in our In- 
ferno to pull the social chariot. It were surely a pity 
to spoil it; so Mrs. B. and her circle when they do 
their alms before men prefer a secret petition to the 
deity whom they serve that their efforts and prayers 
to abolish poverty may be accepted in a Pickwickian 
sense, and that no rash scheme of reform or leveling 
may be allowed to prevail so far as to blight this earth 
as a paradise for the people of quality. 

But is the monstrous accumulation of " incentive " 
in our Inferno a magnificent accumulation of motive 
power? It is not so set down in our philosophy. 
Nor, we may remark, is this doctrine consistently ad- 
hered to in the philosophy of the people of quality. 
The exception seems to be this: a vulgar incentive 
such as hunger or strenuous necessity must never be 
applied to a person of high social standing: God would 
not sanction it. As we have doubted the soundness 
of this latter conclusion we may be allowed to dispute 
the orthodox " incentive " doctrine as applied to the 
poor of the Inferno. We maintain that a monstrous 

such inconsistencies must be explained by supposing that the sub- 
ject of Pauperism and the approaches thereto is marked off from 
other economic subjects in mens minds by a heavy division line, 
and the whole department labeled " not human." 



214 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

accumulation of such " incentive " is no source of 
power at all, but a vital weakness. 

The power which we need and must have to operate 
our productive machinery is compounded of two ele- 
ments, ability and zeal, — and zeal we may reasonably 
consider as a product of " incentive." But the phil- 
osophy of the people of quality reverses the normal 
order of these. Ability is the primary factor; zeal or 
" incentive " simply calls it into action. An incen- 
tive has no power to produce ability. The keen 
yearning of a street-urchin for the good dinner whose 
distant odors reach his nostrils, does not increase his 
power to earn money. On the other hand, ability, which 
consists largely of preparation, does almost necessarily 
produce zeal, for it enlarges the vision to see the more 
distant incentives. And herein is an important fal- 
lacy of the " incentive " doctrine as applied to the 
Inferno: — the influential incentive is not the highest 
one, but the nearest one. The actually effective in- 
centive to the denizens of the Inferno is not infinity, 
as it should be according to the people-of-quality 
philosophy, but simply hunger and destitution. The 
higher incentives are utterly hidden from view and 
influence by the dominance of the lowest ones. 

It is a sad commentary on our fin-de-siecle civiliza- 
tion that it still places so much dependence on these 
lower motives. Pain, hunger, cold, fright, — these 
were once honored allies of jurisprudence and re- 
ligion. In the Middle Ages the rack was esteemed a 
necessary agency to secure the telling of the truth, 
and the fagot an indispensable means of instilling cor- 
rect doctrine. But these uses of torture are passed 
away, and they have left its retention for economic 



Chap. xv. A NEW CHARITY OF EQUALITY. 215 

purposes an awful anachronism. It has also largely 
passed away in dealing with the nobler brutes; it is 
now recognized that the highest capabilities of the 
horse and dog do not respond to the application of the 
lash. Yet a large part of our ultra-respectability 
whose acquaintance with hunger is wholly literary, 
still stoutly maintains that hunger is an indispensable 
means of calling forth economic merits. 

The whole question resolves itself into this: Shall 
man be led or driven? If the latter, the way to se- 
cure the greatest speed from a runner is to have him 
pursued by a wild beast. If the former, the way is to 
train him and develop his muscles, and then offer him 
a coveted prize of high honor. Those who believe 
that a poor, starving, trembling wretch, fleeing in 
mortal terror from a pursuing tiger, could equal the 
speed of a strong, trained, aspiring runner, may well 
believe in the economic power of hunger. They 
would likewise look to see the army of infant bread- 
winners prevail over the trained and disciplined regi- 
ments of modern industry; they would sharpen the 
faculties of a physician about to prescribe by remind- 
ing him that failure would cost him his life; they 
would force our scientists to guess the riddles of 
matter and force by the threat of pains and penalties. 
But those who believe that power, training and as- 
piration must infinitely surpass the wildest spasms of 
agony and mortal terror will not build their phil- 
osophy upon pain and destitution as an economic 
force. 

In fact driving a man is, in a sense, impossible, for 
the whole man cannot be driven. He is a dual being, 
— a brute yoked with an archangel, — and if we choose 



216 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book 111. 

to drive we drive only the brute. But it is unneces- 
sary to point out that our civilization rests on the 
labors of man the archangel, not man the brute. For 
every man who is driven by cold or hunger or desti- 
tution to toil as a brute in the service of society the 
world unwittingly sacrifices the glad services of a hu- 
man being,— and every human being possesses within 
himself somewhat of the archangel. Every toiler 
who is held to a dull and spiritless round of task-work 
by the brute-driving forces of cold and hunger is prac- 
tically forbidden to aspire, and since aspiration and 
advancement are the distinguishing characteristics of 
the genus homo, this makes him in effect an outcast 
from the human race. 

This sort of talk passes as silly idealism among peo- 
ple of quality. They have a crushing rejoinder to 
it: it consists of the question, " Who would sweep the 
streets, collect the garbage, handle the pick and 
shovel, mine the coal? — would you? These things 
must be done: if you get every day-laborer started to 
aspiring after the presidency, you would no doubt 
have a fine, gilt-edged world, but could any of us live 
in it? Your pity for the condition of the poor laboring 
man of course does you great credit, and all that, but 
at present these things get done, and under your im- 
proved system they certainly would n't. For our part, 
we prefer the evils we have." 

We fully appreciate this fact, and why our people 
of quality bear so patiently the present evils — of 
others. But before trying to provide a way to get our 
streets cleaned under our new system of redistributed 
Income, let us call attention to a plain and somewhat 
important admission contained in talk like the above. 



Chap. xv. A NEW CHARITY OF EQUALITY. 217 

It is this: that labor of the especially severe and dis- 
agreeable kinds is not now really free to contract or 
not to contract, — it is driven by the fear of hunger to 
its tasks. If it were not so driven, if it had the bene- 
fits of really free competition, our people of quality 
would not be worrying over the possibility that these 
tasks would be forsaken when once the " incentives " 
of hunger and destitution were removed. Yet we 
hear much lamentation from Mrs. B.'s circle that the 
earning power of the very poor is so small, — that they 
are so ill fitted to meet the tests of the merit system, 
and are, under free competition, forced to take so low 
a place. We begin to think that to double the earn- 
ings of the very poor would perfect Mrs. B.'s happi- 
ness. But we soon discover, when we propose a 
measure that seems likely to increase their earning 
power and grant them the benefits of still freer com- 
petition, that we are cruelly wringing the withers of 
Mrs. B. and her fellow-workers. Evidently the pub- 
lic sorrow of this distinguished circle over the small 
earning power of the very poor is mitigated by the 
private conviction that this state of things inures to 
the benefit of people of quality. They find it cheaper 
to be charitable than to be just. 

But how would we get the streets cleaned, the garb- 
age collected? We would pay for it, — pay what it 
was worth. What would it be worth? It would be' 
worth enough money to induce a self-respecting human 
being to give his time to it, — or to invent machinery to 
do it. It is a well-known and sorrowful fact that much 
labor-saving machinery could be adopted to-morrow 
but for the outrageously low cost of the labor the ma- 
chine would displace. Machinery works cheaply, but 



218 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book HI. 

not for nothing ; it costs its keep and the charges neces- 
sary for its renewal. But flesh and blood can often be 
had for the bare cost of living, — very poor living, — 
and nothing said about the cost of producing it. Such 
flesh and blood is now cheaper than machinery, but 
our redistribution of Income would infallibly make it 
dearer. And every other class of labor that is now 
driven to its tasks it would make dearer, for the slave- 
whips of the human race, — hunger and destitution, — 
would be gone. Every kind of work that the World 
needed done she would have to pay for at a rate that 
would seem fair to some man who had the world be- 
fore him as the market for his talents, and the ability 
to wait as well as to labor. 

But one sort of payment that would certainly be 
demanded, — and conceded, — for such work would be 
an increased measure of social consideration. If men 
were free to choose their occupations, they would cer- 
tainly shun those to which a traditionary social stigma 
is attached. It would follow that if society still in- 
sisted on maintaining such traditions, it would have to 
pay those engaged in work of the kind enough to over- 
come their repugnance to the stigma. But it would 
soon be discovered that paying in social consideration 
is not only much cheaper, but much more pleasant, 
than paying in money, — that " it blesseth him that 
gives and him that takes," and that at every step it 
oils the wheels of society instead of impeding their 
revolutions. When this important but neglected 
truth came to be sufficiently demonstrated, exclusive- 
ness would begin to lose its prominence as a social 
ideal, and the progress of society in developing great 
differences in industrial capacity would proceed in 



Chap. xv. A NEW CHARITY OF EQUALITY. 219 

perfect harmony with the concurrent development of 
true social equality. 

And true social equality, be it understood, is not a 
leveling down, but a leveling up. It does not force 
the acceptance of a boor as a gentleman, but welcomes 
the gentleman, even if he emerge from the soil that 
usually grows boors. It does not say that a railroad 
president must be intimate with a street-sweeper, but 
that if the two are congenial no factitious metes and 
bounds shall hamper them. " Do you wish to dine 
with a hostler ? " query the people of quality deris- 
ively. We do not usually wish to dine with those 
who do not wish to dine with us. And very few un- 
welcome people would be likely to force themselves 
on us if all boundary fences were removed. The 
people who now occasionally take this method of dem- 
onstrating that one man's as good as another would 
soon weary of the demonstration if our social cleavage 
lines were not constantly mumbling their shibboleth 
of exclusiveness. 

There is, however, no great difficulty about provid- 
ing for the doing of any necessary work, even with 
these social complications added. We have not dis- 
turbed the precious institutions of competition and 
freedom of contract, and they are amply able to care 
for all the phases of this new situation we have evoked. 
If the current rate of wages for cleaning the streets 
grew unduly high on account of the social stigma in- 
volved and the large number of street-cleaners who 
caught the presidential fever, — why, then, the influx 
of competing talent from the ranks of unoccupied 
physicians and lawyers would of course lower it again, 
and at the same time raise the social standing of the 



220 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book ill. 

calling. If distress were caused by a strike of the 
coal-miners, the bookkeepers out of employment could 
crowd in, to their own financial gain, and the great 
damage of imaginary social barriers. These beautiful 
little checks and balances of free competition are well 
known to all students of economics, and many a stately 
syllogism has shown us their widespread effectiveness 
and beneficence. They would certainly not be less 
effective or beneficial when leading men with the in- 
centives of ambition and self-development than when 
driving brutes by force of hunger and destitution. 
But both their effectiveness and beneficence would be 
shown by their adjusting the rewards, including those 
of social position, to the difficulty and distastefulness 
of the work; and those worshipers of the great god 
Competition who yet think his smiles are not for the 
very poor might find under these circumstances that 
he wields a two-edged sword. 

This, we fear, is the hard saying of our gospel of 
opportunity for all mankind; no explanation we can 
give of it will induce those to whom it is distasteful 
to walk longer with our ideal of human freedom. 
Tor many of those whose desire for a regenerated 
world is most beautifully keen have no sort of appe- 
tite for its burdens. They would have Utopia come 
by the next express, but stand aghast upon finding that 
they must help to pay the freight. And as a matter 
of fact the ranks not only of our people of quality but 
even of our middle classes would in the beginning be 
heavily assessed for the costs of bringing in the reign 
of justice ; and the cheap command of the lower strata 
of labor, which has come to be second nature to these, 
would be one of the first indulgences that would have 



Chap. xv. A ^EW CHARITY OF EQUALITY. 221 

to be sacrificed. The necessity of paying truly living- 
prices to even the lowest class of labor would be a 
change of such wide significance that it would spring 
costly surprises upon the rich and the well-to-do at 
every turn of life's pathway; and when this fact comes 
to be well understood it will cause the desertion from 
our cause of many a stout ally from among the people 
of quality. 

But the desertion of such allies is as good as a 
heavy reinforcement, and is in fact a necessary pre- 
liminary to a successful campaign. jSTo serious 
diminution of the evils of excessive poverty can ever 
result from a movement so decorously restrained as 
that which these people would like to conduct. They 
sincerely wish the very poor to get more money, but 
upon one thing they insist, — that they shall not get 
it from its present possessors except as a charity of 
condescension. And they fortify this position by 
showing in great detail that the poor now get all that 
free competition awards them, — and of course no man 
has a right to more than this. It never seems to 
occur to them that under some new status such as our 
redistribution scheme would produce, they — the peo- 
ple of quality — would still get all that free competi- 
tion would award them, — and more of course they 
could not claim. All of which goes to show that there 
is all the difference in the world in free competition, 
and that this difference lies in the fixing of the point 
from which competition starts. We ask special atten- 
tion to the fact that it is the readjustment of this 
point only which we have attempted, and that we have 
not in the least laid unholy hands on the sacred in- 
stitution of competition itself. 



222 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

The assumption, so common among the prosperous, 
that the poor have had perfect justice and are simply 
in need of mercy, is largely an anodyne for irritated 
and painful consciences. It is to a great extent dis- 
ingenuous, for the prosperous often make the opposite 
assumption with great candor, as when they thank 
fortune or some other deity that they were not born 
to the lot of the poor. Looking the facts straight in 
the face, and admitting to ourselves what a large share 
environment has had in fixing our various positions, 
we cannot but admit a large possibility of influencing 
the future position of the poor by modifying their 
environment. The absolute justice and righteous- 
ness of the added burden which this would lay on any 
member of the favored classes cannot but grow clearer 
the more it is subjected to calm thought. 

We have hitherto argued this point upon the basis 
of justice alone, so far as the favored classes of society 
are concerned, for the valid reason that justice is the 
only proper motive to address in the matter of right- 
ing wrongs. But expediency has a remarkable way 
of chiming in ultimately with the conclusions of jus- 
tice. Very rarely in the history of the race have 
vested interests suffered as much as had been antici- 
pated from the carrying out of a measure of justice. 
We are confident that this would prove to be the case 
with the reform we are now advocating. While at 
first sight it seems a measure to lift the submerged 
classes at the expense of those higher up in the social 
scale, it is in reality a plan to restore health to the 
whole social body by removing a hideous and exhaust- 
ing excrescence. The initial burden of the new con- 



Chap. xv. A NEW CHARITY OF EQUALITY. 223 

clitions would undoubtedly fall on the prosperous, but 
the resulting material benefits alone would more than 
repay them, leaving the peace of mind they would 
secure by the change as a clear profit. 

For one of the very first results of better-paid ser- 
vice would be better service, — service given joyously, 
ungrudgingly, conscientiously, with a constant ten- 
dency toward improvement, and an earnest desire and 
aspiration toward the very best. It would be the ser- 
vice of the budding powers of man the archangel, 
training himself in his humble position for his greater 
tasks still to come. And those who have spent their 
lives in a fruitless effort to spur the dull brute man 
into rising above the bonds of his sodden task-work 
and eye-service, would feel a burden slip from their 
shoulders as the influx of strong new hope began to 
lift with joy and enthusiasm the dead weight that had 
so long baffled the slave-whips of society. 

But better service and better work mean not only 
increased satisfaction to the employing classes, but in- 
creased product. The labor of the very poor would 
cost more money, but it would immediately begin to 
result in an increased product, and hence to return 
more money; and this would diminish the apparent 
burden upon the well-to-do. It would not be strange, 
indeed, if the raising of these wages should in the 
end prove a measure of strictly business economy for 
employers. The present rapidly-growing supremacy 
of American manufacturing skill is based upon the 
cheapness of well-paid labor. But whether working 
for employers or for themselves the increased effi- 
ciency of their labor would of course be a pure gain 
to society, as a whole. We hope and believe it would 



224 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

be an immense gain; that with even the humblest 
laborer working with a reasonable hope, and with the 
deep-seated energy of far-sighted aspiration, the in- 
crease in amount of material wealth produced would 
be enormous. And we may well trust the ability of 
competition under the really free contract system to 
make a fair division of the proceeds. 

We do not wish to forget the limitations of our new 
uplifting influence. We have called in no unfamiliar 
virtue to transform society, and all that we can rea- 
sonably expect from the proposed change, in the 
aspect we are now considering, is to add the present 
submerged classes to our middle classes. This would 
evidently leave us still far from the millennium. One 
can easily call to mind a whole host of reform move- 
ments now in operation that would be needed just as 
much under the new conditions as they are now. But 
on the other hand it must be admitted that were even 
so little as this accomplished our Beast must pine and 
die. Our social conditions would never have become 
an acute and menacing problem had the woes and 
wrongs of our middle classes (including even our poor 
but advancing and hopeful wage-earners), been the 
worst question we had to face. 

We think it may be fairly urged against our 
scheme, so far as it has been developed, that it prac- 
tically ignores one-half of the Beast we set out to kill 
or conquer, — the disease of extreme wealth. We 
have extirpated utter destitution, but not excessive 
riches. In spite of the enormous protest we have en- 
countered from the favored classes at every step, we 
have yet done comparatively little toward diminish- 
ing the danger of tremendous accumulations of 



Chap. xv. A NEW CHARITY OF EQUALITY. 225 

wealth. We have indeed diminished the power of 
these accumulations by half, but it is evident that 
even thus reduced it is unduly great. It will be still 
open to our Millionaires to wantonly waste their 
wealth, to be deeply pauperized by it, and to pauper- 
ize others by the example of the sacrifices in the tem- 
ple of Display. They can still keep alive the spirit 
of social exclusiveness, and use their advantages to 
sow bitterness of feeling between those who must be 
cooperators. They can use the power of their wealth, 
if they see fit, to work against our plans and any plans 
of reform, and to be a drag upon any good and worthy 
cause. 

They can, but will they? We think not. The 
rich are amenable to public opinion at least as largely 
as the poor, and it is through the force of public opin- 
ion that we now propose a tremendous blow to the 
unholy rites of the temple of Display. We would 
withdraw their audience, — a simple but effective 
remedy. With the present lower classes and the 
black sheep of the middle classes gone to work zeal- 
ously at self-development, there would be no gaping 
crowd loitering around the temple to see the seed- 
grain burn. And we fancy that the charm of the 
sacrifices would thereupon largely vanish, and that 
even our Millionaires-by-inheritance might be driven 
to self-development as a refuge from ennui. 

That much time would be needed for the develop- 
ment of the results we have traced; that many indi- 
viduals would respond feebly or not at all to our new 
influences; that, our reanimated society would soon 
grow its own crop of troubles and perplexities, — all 
this we may concede without in the least surrender- 



226 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

ing our main position. We are not trying to make 
the world flawless, or in fact to deal at all with the 
consideration of those imperfections incident to all 
things human. These must be dealt with as they 
arise, each according to the needs of the case. But 
we firmly believe that the measure we propose would 
remove that malign and mysterious influence affecting 
our social development, whose workings are deeply 
felt but dimly understood, and the distinguishing 
characteristic of which appears to be its perverse male- 
volence, — its power and practice of working evil with 
the natural agencies of benefit. Under such a system 
of universal opportunity for self-development we are 
convinced that the vast power generated by the gen- 
eral effort would inure, and would be seen to inure, 
to the general welfare. Inequalities and abuses 
would doubtless survive in plenty, but the onward 
movement of the race would benefit the individual, 
and the ground gained by the individual would help 
the race. The advance of industry, art and science 
would profit the world even more than it now does; 
but the hideous human sacrifices under its Jugger- 
naut car at each forward movement would definitely 
cease. 

The examination of these aspects of our plan in 
detail we must postpone to later chapters, while we 
turn aside for a time to consider some of the obvious 
objections to the practical workings of the measure we 
are advocating. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

PITFALLS, REAL AND IMAGINARY. 

It is taking a manifestly unfair advantage of one's 
auditors to talk so fast and so continuously that they 
are given no opportunity to relieve their feelings by 
doing some talking themselves. Knowing that the 
victims of our loquacity are loaded with difficult ques- 
tions which they wish to thrust at us upon the first 
break in our stream of talk, let us now give them fair 
opportunity. Let us devote this chapter to talking 
on the defensive, — to patiently considering and an- 
swering as best we may the objections which may and 
of course will be raised against our scheme or its 
details. 

But the objections we now propose to consider are 
not those which arise from conflicting theories. Those 
who have accepted or formulated for themselves 
theories regarding the nature of the Beast, and the 
proper means for his extermination, at variance with 
ours, as well as those who assert that he is a myth, 
will of course look on all we say as fundamentally 
wrong. Fundamental differences can only be treated 
by a consideration of fundamentals, and this we do 
not now purpose to attempt. We hope indeed to ex- 
amine in later chapters the relations of our theory 
and plan of procedure to the prominent schemes of 
social reform now occupying the public eye. But our 
present attention shall be given to the examination of 
such objections as naturally arise from the public in 

227 



228 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

general, — those persons not biased by the conscious 
acceptance of any definite theory dealing with these 
matters. 

And first as to the question of its practicability, 
considered as a burden laid upon the taxpayers and a 
task upon our governmental machinery. A man need 
not be an adherent of the extreme non-interference 
school in his ideas of the proper functions of govern- 
ment to receive a shock from the mere immensity of 
our proposal. To collect a yearly tax of ten and a 
half billion dollars ! — it almost takes one's breath 
away to think of it. The British government, in- 
deed, did during the Napoleonic wars appropriate and 
spend in the neighborhood of one-third of the national 
income. But did any civilized government ever tax 
its citizens to the extent of one-half their total income? 
And all this proposed in a time of cloudless peace! 

We have no explanation or apology to offer for the 
size of this proposed transaction. It is a large meas- 
ure; it was intended to be a large measure; it was 
framed with the intention of securing large results. 
But we can very easily fall into serious error in our 
consideration of it by comparing it with the tre- 
mendous taxation of the British government in the 
early years of this century. This latter was a burden 
pure and simple. The wealth which the government 
took was mainly consumed in the terrible holocausts 
of war, and left nothing except death and suffering 
to show for it. The wealth which under this scheme 
our national government would collect would be at 
once turned over to the proper owners, to be expended 
at least as wisely and productively as is usually the 
case with private wealth. There would be no burden 



Chap, xvi PITFALLS, REAL AND IMAGINARY. 229 

on the nation as a whole except the pay of the tax 
collectors and distributers, — it would be a mere shift 
of income. And the shifting would be entirely in 
the direction of those who had the most profitable use 
for, the greatest need of, and strongest moral claim 
upon, the shifted income. 

Of course there would be abundance of burden in- 
volved in the levy and collection of these taxes. As 
this is a part of the main reason for advocating this 
measure it would be useless to attempt to apologize 
for it. But one important fact should be noted here, 
— the burden does not in the least lie upon the pro- 
cesses of wealth - production or distribution. We 
strike no blow at the power that moves the world. 
No manufacturer would be forced to close his mill, 
no semi-annual dividend would be passed over, no 
merchant would be straitened, no workman would bo 
thrown out of his situation by these taxes. They 
would of course be directly collected from the indus- 
trial and commercial forces, and equally as a matter 
of course they would be straightway added to the 
prices of the commodities going out from these forces 
to supply the world's needs. The Consumer would 
of course pay them, — he could not choose but pay. 
He could of course protest, and diminish his con- 
sumption; and at the upper end of the social scale he 
naturally would do the latter. But any diminution 
of consumption here would of course be balanced by 
the increased consumption of society below the median 
line. And in the meantime the power which keeps 
the faculties of the industrial forces tensely strained 
upon wealth-production would never for one instant 
be intermitted. 



230 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book in. 

Still another important fact let us note about this 
new burden, — it does not strike capriciously or at 
random. It is not laid upon some one form of prop- 
erty, which by pure chance a man may have or not 
have. It does not pass by the Millionaire to strike 
down the poor widow; it cannot possibly ignore the 
rich despoiler of seed-grain to rest its weight upon the 
busy man of affairs. It does not strike at great ac- 
cumulations, but only at their dissipation; it does not 
strike at great earnings or profits, but only at their use 
in free-handed living. It rests upon men substan- 
tially in proportion to their ability to bear it, and if 
it tend to retard any social movements, they are those 
that make the nation poorer. 

But spending money is of course necessary and 
proper, and so far as these taxes fall on beneficial ex- 
penditure they can only be considered as a burden 
pure and simple. And it must be admitted that they 
would not only burden — or rather unburden — the 
very rich, but would also fall on those whom we would 
gladly spare, — the merely prosperous, and even many 
who consider themselves unprosperous, but whose in- 
come and expenditure are yet above the average for 
the nation. But it must be remembered that this is 
not primarily a leveling measure ; — it is simply a 
measure of plain justice. It does not by any means 
establish the exact distribution of wealth which a wise 
despot would decree, but it does abolish the worst of 
the existing social sores, and it does this not by any 
revolutionary departure, but by the mere recognition 
in practice of a principle which has been universally 
adopted in theory. That any such change must 
necessarily work some hardship is of course certain. 



Chap. xvi. PITFALLS, REAL AND IMAGINARY. 231 

We must all regret that any wisely-used wealth 
should be taken even in the name of Justice, but such 
cases will often occur. To try to turn Justice into 
a mere dispenser of sugar plums would be both futile 
and ridiculous. 

But as we have before urged, a measure of justice 
is rarely so terrible to experience as it is awful to an- 
ticipate. Even those who would apparently be the 
greatest sufferers by the redistribution would find a 
large solace for their smart in the return of their share 
of the Income. To tax a man a thousand dollars and 
return him eighty may seem like an insult, but it 
would not in the least have this appearance in reality. 
For the despised little income from the Property in 
Ideas would have one attribute which is as rare as 
diamonds in the business world of to-day, — it would be 
sure. In the heyday of a man's prosperity it would 
perhaps be scornfully neglected, and allowed to lie 
and accumulate in the registry office; but with what 
deep thankfulness would he turn to claim his birth- 
right when misfortune came or old age descended 
upon him. Many a sleepless night would it save a 
man whose all is embarked in some doubtful enter- 
prise if he knew that he had one dependable resource 
on which to count in the day of adversity. Many a 
strained nerve would be eased, many an anxious fore- 
boding would be stilled into sweet sleep by the 
thought of an indefeasible share in the Inheritance 
from the Ages. We believe it would be impossible 
to overestimate the influence of this one rock founda- 
tion amid our shifting sand in replacing with sanity 
and serenity of mind the fever and strain of our mod- 
ern life. 



232 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

But even leaving out of account the solace of the 
return of Income, the payment of the initial taxation 
would not be by any means so difficult as its magni- 
tude would seem to indicate. It would be a taxation 
paid simply in the price of a purchased article, and, 
as we all know, people often pay such taxes, even 
when quite heavy, in blissful ignorance of being taxed 
at all. It has required much angry vociferation on 
the part of the tariff reformers to make the people 
understand — rather hazily — that the tariff is a tax. 
And there is a good reason underlying all this seem- 
ing obtuseness. What man in his senses would not 
rather have the prices he was paying doubled than 
have his income cut in half? In the former case the 
taxation is at his option to a certain extent, — he is 
not forced to buy. In the latter the tax is unavoid- 
able. 

Now if any man of our prosperous middle class 
were asked if he could endure being taxed to the ex- 
tent of half his income he would probably reply in 
perplexed horror, ~No, never. But if any man who 
was in early manhood during the years immediately 
preceding the panic of 1873 were asked if he could 
then have lived on his present income (stated in cur- 
rency dollars), he would in a majority of cases be 
forced to reply that he did then live on less, and did 
not consider himself especially pinched. Yet to go 
back to the price levels of 1870-73 would tax a man 
almost half his present income.* And this is sub- 

* Taking the number 100 as representing general commodity 
prices in 1873, the corresponding number for 1897 was 57; or, in 
other words, $57 in gold would, in 1897, buy as much of the gen- 
eral purchasable articles of human desire as $100 in gold would 



Chap. xvi. PITFALLS, REAL AND IMAGINARY. 233 

stantially the taxing effect of our proposed measure 
(ignoring for the moment the redistribution of the 
tax as Income) : — it would take us all back to the 
price levels of 1870-73 with our present incomes. 

Is this such a terrible thought? Is this too great 
a price to pay for the abolition of the Inferno and the 
extension of the opportunity of self-development to the 
very bottom stratum of our social pyramid? Looked 
at with our financial microscopes it may seem so: 
human life and hope and happiness are lightly valued 
in Wall Street, — the vested interests have the right 
of way. Yet measured by the cost of our political 
freedom in the Revolution, or the cost of freeing our 
land from the blight of slavery in the Rebellion, the 
cost of giving freedom of opportunity to our sub- 
merged classes would be trifling. Yet who now 
thinks those agonies of national birth and of re- 
generation too costly? But questions of cost, Wall 
Street standards, cannot properly be heard in this 
court. It is enough that this new gift of freedom 
would be a measure of justice as were the earlier ones. 

What society would lose in going back to the price 
levels of 1873 is substantially what society has gained 
since then in the fall of prices. How shall we ap- 
praise this gain? What serious and worthy aelvance 
has society to show for this doubling of its command 
over nature? Can anyone seriously maintain that its 
happiness, its health, its power to face the real prob- 

buy in 1873. In 1873, however, a dollar meant to the people of the 
United States, a paper dollar ; a gold dollar being worth $1.13 in 
paper money. Therefore a given amount of the current money in 
1897 bought almost exactly twice as much as the same amount of the 
current money in 1873. (Since 1897 the general level of prices has 
risen somewhat. ) 



234 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book ill. 

lems of life have been doubled? Does anyone really 
believe that this increment of effective income has 
been wisely spent? that it has gone for the essentials 
of right living, and not for frippery? 

We think it will be generally admitted that this 
query must be answered in the negative. Much pure 
benefit has undoubtedly accrued to society from this 
great fall in prices; the aids to right living have been 
made more easily available and have been availed of 
more freely. But a strong opposite tendency shown 
in such periods cannot have escaped the notice of the 
observant. It is to look on added purchasing power 
through the fall in prices as a license to self-indul- 
gence. As the prices of necessaries fall, luxuries tend 
to take their places. The silk dress replaces that of 
cotton or wool, embroidery makes its appearance on 
handkerchiefs and undergarments, jewelry increases 
in quantity and costliness, and bric-a brae, pictures, 
and all the paraphernalia of expensive living grow in 
quantity and elaborateness. The sensuous delights 
of delicacy and softness, the fastidious refinements of 
taste, the sensitiveness of the stimulated critical per- 
ceptions expand in importance until they fill the whole 
life. All our friends and neighbors seem to be tread- 
ing this primrose path; how can we leave their pleas- 
ant company and turn to face the rugged ways that 
lead upward? 

Under such circumstances it requires a Spar Ian 
courage to cast aside the seductive hindrances and 
spend one's money and energy in the pursuit of the 
eternal verities. Too often the multiplied opportu- 
nities which social progress puts in our bands slip 
away unperceived in the steady growth of luxurious 



Chap. xvi. PITFALLS, REAL AND IMAGINARY. 235 

indulgence. A generation of the world's progress * 
doubles our opportunities; and when we come to take 
account of stock we find it has almost doubled our 
indulgences, while we still plead our poverty as loudly 
as ever in excuse for our tolerance of the Inferno and 
other social iniquities. 

Now we well know that laws and institutions do 
not make virtue, and that opportunity does not 
make vice. But as helps and hindrances their in- 
fluence is most potent, and we shall do well not to 
ignore them in considering these questions. Why 
does society so easily expand into these indulgences as 
soon as the power to command them is given to her? 
A large part of the explanation is undoubtedly to be 
found in the manner in which the neglected income 
from the Property in Ideas is distributed. We wish 
to draw especial attention to this as a fact of the widest 
significance. 

To reduce prices is, as we have seen, equivalent to 
a gift of money; to increase prices is equivalent to 
taxation. Yet just as people do not know they are 
being taxed through high prices, they do not see 
they are being entrusted with a legacy from the race 
when it is given to them through the medium of 
lowered prices. The gift is secret; it is a coin dropped 
in a man's pocket without his knowledge. He finds 
it there to spend, but is innocent of any obligation 
accompanying it. He cannot know for what reason 
it was given him, if he receive it unwarned of its 
significance. 

* No implication is here intended that the fall in prices since 
1873 has been due solely to the progress of invention and increase 
in industrial efficiency. We think it plain, however, that this 
has been the principal and typical cause. 



236 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book ill. 

How imperative, then, the need that the meaning of 
this Heritage of the Race be sounded in clarion tones 
to every heir. He should know that the riches in his 
hands are sacred; that they were won for him by the 
slow upward toiling of his ancestors; that he is un- 
worthy of the gift if he do not receive them as a 
sacred trust to be used for the continuance of the 
progress, — as help to self-help. Given with this 
meaning conveyed by all the circumstances of their 
origin and distribution, these funds would appeal 
directly and powerfully to the manhood of the race. 
Given as the fruits of overproduction, as unvalued 
crumbs fallen from plenteous tables, they appeal only 
to the instinct for self-indulgence, the almost univer- 
sal underlying tendency to relax into sybaritism. 

When this expansion into luxury has gone beyond 
the obvious and immediate desires it begins to de- 
velop into the worship of Display. The indulgence 
of a man is kept up to a certain point by motives of 
ostentation, — by emulation of his richer neighbor's 
display on the one hand, and determination to outdo 
that of his poorer neighbor on the other. Thus 
society, even far down into our middle classes, re- 
solves itself into a long procession facing and striving 
toward the temple of Display, and men are ranked in 
this procession by the amount of seed-grain they 
devote to the worship of the idol. And with this 
glorious deity richly worshiped in his central temple, 
and the long line of aspirants crowding up to the 
temple gates, we need not seek further reason for the 
fact that the industrial gains of society secure for us 
so little advance in the essentials of right living. 



Chap. xvi. PITFALLS, REAL AND IMAGINARY. 237 

Now to retrace our steps to the price levels of 1873 
would be difficult iu one way, for it would shake us 
out of many of our cherished indulgences, but it 
would be easy in another, for a man would not lose 
his place in the procession. The funds of display 
would be tremendously shortened, but each man would 
suffer in due proportion, and the sting of his depriva- 
tion would be largely gone when he found his neigh- 
bors bore him company. Life would soon take up its 
cheerful round again, and the world's welfare would 
be fully as well served with only half the amount of 
seed-grain contributed to Display as it is now. 

Thus even considered as a pure burden our new 
taxation could hardly be called insupportable, so far 
as it would affect the more favored classes. The 
abstracted funds would, indeed, leave some worthy 
causes straitened, but in most cases they would only 
strike at self-indulgence. And considered in any full 
sense no burden would exist, for the new distribution 
of Income would place a force at the service of society 
of which we have not yet described even a foretaste. 
But this subject we shall pursue more largely else- 
where. 



The collection of this Income in the shape of taxes 
and its division among the people in equal shares, 
would be undoubtedly a large task laid upon the 
national government. There is a strong sentiment at 
present amongst many of our best citizens against 
any such extension of the functions of government, 
" While our present governmental operations are so 
outrageously misconducted," they urge, "it would 



238 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book HI. 

surely be a fatuous policy to extend them largely. 
First let us secure a clean and businesslike administra- 
tion of those offices our government is already dis- 
charging, and then we can consider upon its merits 
any proposition to extend its sphere." 

It is impossible to ignore the force of this reason- 
ing. It is undoubtedly the servant who is faithful in 
his few things who should be made ruler over many. 
But in the case of a popular government such as ours 
it is hardly open to us to consider the office-holders 
simply as the servants of the people. It is more 
nearly correct to say that the people and the office- 
holders are one and the same body. We think most 
persons who' have examined the matter will bear us 
out in saying that the faults of our civil service are 
largely the faults of the average citizen. This 
estimable person is largely resigned to the low stand- 
ard of capacity for office-holding because he very 
often thinks of himself as a possible office-holder: — 
raising the standard would be raising the bars against 
himself. But he rarely thinks of himself as the prin- 
cipal for whom the office-holder is transacting busi- 
ness, and the reason is largely, we opine, that the busi- 
ness in question seems to be beyond his immediate 
concern. He is not taxed by the national govern- 
ment, — to his knowledge; he does not actually feel the 
benefit from the money spent for fleets and armies, 
lighthouses or the consular service. He therefore 
lacks acute demonstration of the evils of incompetency 
and sloth, and of the value of thorough equipment 
and zeal in the civil service. 

Now so far as the inefficiency of our civil service 
rests upon popular apathy, the indicated medicine is 



Chap. xvi. PITFALLS, REAL AND IMAGINARY. 239 

certainly to provide a cause for strong popular interest 
in its results. A man's participation in the income 
from the Property in Ideas would certainly constitute 
such a cause. If every citizen were watching the 
conduct of the civil servants with a clear understand- 
ing that the size of his share of Income depended 
largely upon their efficiency, we fancy such apathy 
would die a sudden death. The collection of the In- 
come, and every incident of its administration and 
distribution, would soon come to be scanned and 
criticized with the same close attention that a man 
gives to his private business. Looseness in the con- 
duct of the public interests would soon come to seem 
intolerable to our average citizen; the civil service 
would be forced to take unto itself those qualities of 
alertness and competency which distinguish workmen 
who are ever under the eye of a judicious, discrimin- 
ating taskmaster. 

"We think this method of reforming the civil service 
the true one, and feel confident that the very highest 
order of merit would soon be secured by its operation. 
This would be highly desirable, and even necessary, 
for, entirely apart from any question relating to our 
present proposals, a great extension of governmental 
action in the near future seems inevitable. But for 
the purpose of executing the trust which we desire 
to place in the hands of the general government no 
especially high level of ability would be necessary. 
No large powers would be placed in the hands of the 
officials executing the laws. They would only act 
within the narrowest bounds of delegated authority, — 
administrative in the collecting, judicial in the dis- 
bursing of the Income. It would, indeed, call for 



240 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

much technical knowledge and industrial and politi- 
cal experience to draft such a measure. One of the 
noticeable points of difficulty would be to provide for 
incorporating into the Property, and beginning to col- 
lect the royalties upon, the privately-owned patents 
expiring year by year. This would of course need to 
be done in anticipation, that no gap might intervene 
between the private and public ownership. These 
and other similar points would require the skill and 
knowledge of specialists, but no more than are called 
for by every tariff measure passed. But to adminis- 
ter the measure when passed would call for only com- 
mon care and honesty in the handling of large sums 
of money, on the one hand; and on the other, a 
judicial training and temperament. 

In both of these lines our government has been 
rather conspicuously successful. The revenue has 
always been collected satisfactorily and economically; 
the judicial department has always added dignity and 
honor to the government as a whole. The only change 
in their functions called for by our plan is an increase 
in magnitude, which would simply mean an increased 
force, and a lessened proportionate cost of collecting. 
There is absolutely no reason, judging by the past, to 
fear that such a task as is here contemplated would in 
the least overtax the powers that have so successfully 
dealt with exactly similar tasks on a smaller scale. 

The effects of our redistribution of income from 
the Property in Ideas upon the problems connected 
with our circulating medium may well claim our 
attention for a time. How, it may well be asked, 
would it be possible to-morrow to collect an amount 



Chap. xvi. PITFALLS, REAL AND IMAGINARY. 241 

of money as taxes equal to the whole income of the 
nation to-day? Where would the money come from? 

The treatment of our currency at the time of begin- 
ning the collection of these taxes would be most mo- 
mentous in its results. In the first place it would de- 
cide whether the measure should be one of inflation or 
of contraction. If no addition were made to our cur- 
rency (including in this term bank facilities for 
transferring credits) at the first incidence of the taxes, 
they would result in a contraction of values. The 
prices of commodities would probably remain sub- 
stantially unchanged, but a tremendous readjustment 
would be necessary in their component elements to 
admit the large new item of expense for patent-right 
among them. While we admit the difficulty of say- 
ing exactly what would happen in such a case, we 
think it certain that labor values would seriously 
suffer in the crush, while of course debts, measured in 
the prices of commodities, would remain the same as 
before. 

This method of treating the problem, however, 
scarcely deserves consideration. We doubt the possi- 
bility of collecting taxes of the magnitude proposed 
without largely adding to the circulating medium. 
At any rate, possible or not, it would certainly not 
be advisable. The taxes would measure a new value, 
— that is, a value which had previously existed but 
had been totally ignored in the exchange of goods 
and money. The money which would be paid as taxes 
would therefore represent a commodity new to com- 
merce. A tremendous new volume of exchanges 
would of course result as truly as if ten and a half 
billion dollars' worth of wheat were suddenly added 



242 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

to the amount of commodities previously exchanged 
throughout the land. Manifestly the only way to 
handle this new volume of exchanges without disaster 
would be by adding largely to the facilities for hand- 
ling exchanges, — the currency of this country. 

If this were done the collection of these taxes would 
be in a certain sense a measure of inflation, — that is, 
it would increase the prices of all commodities. 
Strictly speaking, however, there would be no infla- 
tion. The higher prices would not be caused by the 
addition of " wind " (or " water ") to the circulating 
medium, but, on the other hand, the recognition in all 
prices of a perfectly legitimate and important element 
of value which had been previously treated as if value- 
less, would make necessary the increase of the cur- 
rency. Thus the rise in commodity prices would be 
strictly confined to the one item concerned, and the 
other elements of prices would not be affected. This 
method would accomplish the results proposed with 
the smallest possible unsettlement of values, and with 
the purpose and method of the redistribution of In- 
come clearly shown in the increased commodity prices. 
For everybody would easily understand that the old 
elements in the price of any article would represent 
the old elements in its production, while the increase 
in price would represent the tribute paid to the Peo- 
ple's Property in Ideas. 

This would supply the only logical remedy for the 
constant fall of prices which in recent years has 
become such a momentous political issue. Here we 
have the true means for putting an end to the con- 
stant appreciation of debts as measured in purchas- 
ing power; — by reclaiming the golden fruits of the 



Chap. xvi. PITFALLS, REAL AND IMAGINARY. 243 

Property in Ideas into the coffers of the whole race, 
where they rightly belong, instead of devoting them 
to pampering the Consumer. The fall of prices is 
constant and inevitable under our present system, 
however much the existence of our trick yardstick, — 
a fluctuating currency, — may serve to becloud the 
fact, for the whole force of the Property in Ideas is 
working to this precise end. 

What the extent of the increase in the circulating 
medium would need to be in order to compass these 
ends we shall not attempt to decide. In fact no at- 
tempt at an accurate estimate of the amount would 
be necessary; the proper method would be to provide 
a flexible currency, capable of indefinite expansion in 
response to a legitimate demand, and let the demand 
determine the expansion. We may also point out, 
without enlarging upon the fact, or entering the dis- 
cussion that rages around this subject, that such a 
legitimate new demand for money would be a golden 
— (or shall we say a silver?) — opportunity to reestab- 
lish the bimetallic standard, if certain prerequisites of 
its safe operation could be compassed. 

Perhaps some one of our critics is biding his chance 
to inject the Malthusian law of population into the 
discussion. He may be ready to show us that our 
abolition of destitution would be a fatal error; — it 
would remove nature's check to the excessive multi- 
plication of the species. Population would immedi- 
ately increase by leaps and bounds until it pressed 
hard against the limits of subsistence, and destitution 
would become far worse than it was before our offi- 
cious interference. 



244 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book ill. 

This is a peculiarly difficult objection for us to meet. 
Our arsenal is, we admit, poorly provided with weap- 
ons for the disproof of the Malthusian theory. We had 
in fact, lapsed into a habit of considering it a subject 
for purely academic discussion. But a very little 
mixing in current debate soon corrects one's errors on 
this point. Malthus is to-day as truly alive as Shake- 
speare, and rules and reigns with a far more absolute 
sceptre in the hearts and intellects of his followers. 
Any theory which ignores him is sure to be marked 
for assault by his forces. Under the circumstances 
perhaps we would better hastily throw up what 
defenses we can, which, since we cannot in the least- 
claim to have mastered the diffuse literature of the 
subject, must be constructed principally of facts which 
have come within our own field of view. 

To begin with let us consider the Ricardian adden- 
dum to the Malthusian theory, — really an integral 
part of it, — to the effect that the pressure of increas- 
ing population would force cultivation to descend 
constantly to poorer and poorer lands, thus increasing 
the value of the land first occupied, and raising the 
price of food. jSTow, strangely enough, the facts 
which have come under our observation were not in 
exact accord with this theory. And this is all the 
more strange because we and our ancestors since Mal- 
thus's day have lived in a section admirably adapted 
to show the results of increasing population. 

The population of the district of which Philadel- 
phia is the centre has probably increased tenfold in 
the last century. It was and is a fertile farming 
country. Yet wheat land and wheat itself have not 
shown the tremendous advance in value called for by 



Chap. xvi. PITFALLS, REAL AND IMAGINARY. 245 

this theory. We know of good farming land within 
the corporate limits of the city of Philadelphia which 
can be bought now for less money than it com- 
manded in 1820. All through the section in question, 
and, so far as we are acquainted with them, through 
the other eastern states, the same holds good, and often 
in much greater measure. In New England one sees 
on every hand farms abandoned to the tax-gatherer 
which a century ago were cultivated with profit. 

Evidently the pressure of population has not been 
upon the food-producing capabilities of this land. 
JSTor yet has it been exerted upon the land in the west- 
ern states where the bulk of our national supply of 
wheat is now raised. The only actual pressure has 
been in the other direction : — the wheat crop has so in- 
creased that only in years of foreign scarcity, making 
a good export trade, are prices remunerative to the 
farmer, or anywhere near the level of 1800. If 
population ever did press upon the limits of subsist- 
ence, these limits must have incontinently given way 
before the pressure. 

There are many good Malthusians left to ornament 
society, but we never met one among the farmers. 
The man who would be first to profit by the theory 
were it based upon facts, is the one of all others most 
ready to cast a stone at it. Let him who has found 
the cost of his necessary plain food supply increased 
in the past generation in accordance with the theory 
rally to its support. 

But is it not true that population does tend to in- 
crease proportionately to an increase in the means of 
subsistence? If we make all our poor people so much 



24G THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

better off will they not immediately multiply until, 
because of the additional mouths to feed, they are as 
destitute as before? 

Here we may explain that our measure is merely 
a shift of income, and that such a shift of income is 
not, for the nation at large, an increase in the means 
of subsistence. What it gives to one class it takes 
from another; and of course whatever trouble with 
surplus population it may cause on the one hand, it 
relieves similar trouble to the same extent on the 
other. If it threaten the denizens of the Inferno 
with over-population, it offers to the Millionaires relief 
from the tremendous excess of fecundity which, by 
the Malthusian reasoning, must have followed their 
acquirement of large means of subsistence. 

As bearing upon this train of reasoning we offer 
the following essay in its mathematical statement, 
which we hope may be accepted by Malthusians 
as valuable. Let s be the family means of subsist- 
ence, numerically stated, and p the number of sharers 
therein. Evidently — will give us an index num- 
ber representing, in contrasted cases, the comparative 
means of subsistence; and since, ex hypothesi, popu- 
lation tends to increase in proportion to increase in the 
means of subsistence, a simple sum in proportion will 
enable us to reason confidently from a known to an 
unknown instance. Let us take as case A the family 
of Mr. VanA.'s great-grandfather; for case B that of 
Mr. VanA. himself. For the facts in these cases we 
are indebted to our esteemed contemporary the Bugle. 

The family income in case A is given as three hun- 
dred dollars per year, and the number of shakers 
therein grew to fifteen, — two parents, thirteen chil- 



Chap. xvi. PITFALLS, REAL AND IMAGINARY. 247 

dren, — before the pressure of population upon sub- 
sistence checked fecundity. Mr. VanA.'s income is 
given as twelve millions per year. Hence we have 
the following: 

(s in case A) : (s in case B) : : 15 : x. 

Here x of course is the point to which Mr. VanA.'s 
family will, by parity of reasoning, naturally expand. 
Substituting numerical values we have: 

300 : 12,000,000 : : 15 : x. 

We hesitate to proceed to the numerical value of x 
here, for fear we may have made some mistake, but 
we think our reasoning cannot fail to be approved 
by the Malthusians. If the results reached by the 
process are not in exact accord with the facts, it may 
indicate the margin we must allow for error in rea- 
soning upon the Malthusian theory. 

But in direct answer to the question propounded, 
— Is it true that population does tend to increase pro- 
portionately to an increase in the means of subsist- 
ence? — we would say that we believe it to be true as 
dreams are said to be — by contraries. Perhaps we 
owe an apology for our lack of information, but the 
facts which must be perfectly familiar to the Malthus- 
ians have never come under our observation. We 
have seen many families emerge from poverty into 
comfort and prosperity, and several into wealth; but 
not one of them exhibited a parallel and proportionate 
increase in the birth rate. We have even known 
something of the families of a few millionaires, and 
in not one of these was over-population a threatening 



248 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

danger. On the contrary, we have known several 
families that, in extreme poverty, were sorely beset 
with a tendency to over-population which seemed to 
know no bounds. 

The scanty facts of our personal observation seem 
to ns to point to this conclusion: Over-population is 
purely a disease of great poverty and utter improvi- 
dence, and is nature's remedy for a high death rate. 
A strong dash of hope and consequent vigorous effort 
are all that is needed to effect a cure. For those who 
look before and after there is no such abnormal pres- 
sure of population upon subsistence as constitutes a 
social problem. 

There is one aspect of our Redistribution scheme 
which might bring about a partial pressure of popula- 
tion upon subsistence: — which infallibly would, to 
our thinking, were the details allowed to take a certain 
shape. This is the admission of minors to equal shares 
with adults in the Income from the Property in Ideas. 

Of course if these shares were paid over to parents 
as representing their children, we should have sub- 
stantially a state bounty on fecundity. There is a 
close precedent for this in an experiment which was 
tried quite largely in England, — the allowance to 
poor mothers of a certain sum for the maintenance of 
each child: larger for illegitimate than for legitimate 
children. The results in the way of making a trade 
of unchastity were alarming, and the practice was 
discontinued. It need only concern us as furnishing 
a horrible example, to be avoided at all costs. 

The manifest remedy would be to retain each child's 
share in the registry office, and let it accumulate until 



Chap. xvi. PITFALLS, REAL AND IMAGINARY. 249 

his majority, thus giving him a definite and consider- 
able "start in life." Allowances out of this fund might, 
under special circumstances, be made to a minor at 
the discretion of the register, as is now done by our 
orphans' courts. This might be done with some free- 
dom if asked for by the child himself, and if he could 
show a capacity to employ funds to a definite end and 
with some discretion. If asked for by the parents, 
on the other hand, each case would need to be exam- 
ined with great strictness, and security required from 
the petitioners for the proper application of the money. 
It may be confidently predicted that these latter cases 
would be rare. 

With these safeguards we think it will be evident 
that the redistributed Income would have no tendency 
to relax the " preventive checks " to over-population. 

We now approach the problems which our measure 
would introduce into our foreign relations. It must 
be admitted that here the difficulties are real, not im- 
aginary. 

But it must be remembered that difficulties are of 
the essence of foreign relations. Nations are largely 
strangers to each other; misunderstandings and pre- 
judices arise and develop as easily and naturally as 
foul scum gathers on stagnant water. The clash of 
opposing habits and methods is constantly found 
whenever and wherever diverse peoples and races come 
into contact. Under the best circumstances the action 
of one nation's laws upon people of other nationalities 
coming under their influence is almost certain to 
create friction. As a matter of fact the friction is con- 
stant enough and severe enough to provide ample 



250 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

occupation for a large corps of trained diplomats in 
attempting to pour oil upon the troubled waters. 

The admission, then, that a new national policy will 
create international problems is not, in itself, a dam- 
aging one. All previous policies have done so, and 
probably all subsequent ones will. Were there no 
such troubles, our diplomatic service would fall upon 
evil days and tend toward extinction. 

We are therefore not greatly concerned with the 
diplomatic aspect of the threatened problems; we leave 
them with the diplomats. The very most difficult 
problems of our foreign relations, however, would be 
purely problems for home solution, with no possibility 
of receiving aid from the diplomatic corps. Of these 
the first one to claim our attention shall be the time- 
honored question of our treatment of immigrants and 
immigration. 

This country has for several decades served as the 
promised land of the European lower working classes. 
It has been looked upon to a great extent as a land of 
plenty, flowing with milk and honey, where a com- 
fortable livelihood was certain and success was easy. 
This reputation has brought us a plethora of immi- 
grants who were seeking just that kind of success, — 
so much so that in recent years stringent measures of 
self-protection have been contemplated, and partly 
carried out. But it goes without saying that all our 
previous experience in this respect would be far out- 
done when once the news got abroad in the nations of 
the Old World that here the government actually 
furnished every man an income ? 

Of course rigid measures of exclusion would be the 
only resource. Admission would not only have to be 



Chap. xvi. PITFALLS, REAL AND IMAGINARY. 251 

refused to suspicious cases, but the burden of proof 
would necessarily be placed on the intending immi- 
grant. No one could safely be admitted who could 
not prove himself to be possessed of some capital, and 
trained to some definite means of earning a livelihood. 

Even reduced to these dimensions the question 
would not be an easy one. We should have the choice 
of the horns of this dilemma respecting the admission 
of the immigrant to share in the Income: either we 
should have to place him at once on a footing of 
equality with the native population, which, as he 
would not have contributed anything to the nation's 
resources, would seem to be assuming for our country 
an unfair burden as compared with the country 
whence he came; or, on the other hand, we should 
have to exclude him from the income for a term of 
years, — a term of probation w T e may call it. But in 
this latter case he would have to support himself by 
his unaided labor under the disadvantages of a high 
scale of prices, and, falling into misfortune, he would, 
by his frantic efforts to get employment at any price, 
unsettle the rates of the labor market. Here we 
should have the germs of a new Inferno, — a necessi- 
tous class, driven by destitution to take the first work 
that offered, with consequent menace to the positions 
of better-paid labor. This would undoubtedly cause 
widespread apprehension, some falling of wages 
among the weak-kneed, and a loss of that feeling of 
confidence so necessary to support the execution of 
plans for the future. It would be a move in the 
direction of turning back competition to the hunger 
basis. 

We think the first horn decidedly the one to be 



252 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE, Book III. 

chosen. However unjust it may appear that a 
stranger should come here and at once participate in 
our Property in Ideas on an equality with the old in- 
habitants, the danger to society from his non-partici- 
pation would be far greater. We must never suffer 
ourselves to forget that the funds of the Income are 
not rewards of merit, but seed-grain to produce future 
merit. They are, therefore, as truly a protection to 
society as a benefit to the recipient; and if they be 
used for the purposes of self-development, the two 
benefits will be inseparable. But the universal in- 
centive to their wise use would be greatly weakened 
by the existence and intrusion into business life of an 
inferior class of alien outcasts from our new social 
system. The ability to pose as superior to one's neigh- 
bor would thus be open to the lowest of the recipients 
of the Income without any exertion whatever. With 
such an evil chance open to them we cannot doubt that 
many would consume their seed-grain in idleness, con- 
tent in their low position with lording it over the poor 
unfortunates who were still lower. In fact, one such 
instance of injustice would be fatal to the consistency 
of our fabric of opportunity for all mankind. It 
would have far-reaching results tending to disintegra- 
tion; for such a structure as we propose can only rest 
on a foundation of fairness as broad as society. 

The only preventive measures, then, that seem at all 
practicable in dealing with the evils threatened by 
undesirable immigration are those of exclusion. We 
shall be justified in establishing a high standard for 
admission to our Commonwealth in Ideas, for we have 
left no sphere of action for a proletariat, and every 
inhabitant must be a full citizen, either in esse or in 



Chap. xvi. PITFALLS, REAL AND IMAGINARY. 253 

embryo. But once we have adopted a man into our 
nation we have taken him for better or for worse; 
and must do to him as to our own flesh and blood. 
Any failure of justice or of opportunity for the least 
of these would be a menace to all society. 

A question hardly less momentous is that of the 
effect of our proposed measure upon foreign com- 
merce. 

The immediate difficulty to be met upon the imposi- 
tion of our new taxes is not so formidable as it might 
at first sight appear. Our new taxes are not in the 
least concerned with the discussion between the Pro- 
tection and Free Trade theories. They would, there- 
fore, simply be so laid as to maintain the status quo 
ante. The tax collected as internal revenue upon 
articles produced in the country would of course be 
likewise collected at the custom-houses upon the same 
articles when imported, and this in addition to any 
taxes designed to be protective. On the contrary, ar- 
ticles for export would upon shipment be subject to a 
drawback equal to the tax collected upon them as 
royalty due the Property in Ideas; or, preferably, 
would be bonded for export at the point of manufac- 
ture, so that no levy of tax would be necessary. These 
taxes would, therefore, neither favor nor restrain 
either imports or exports. 

The obvious objection to this arrangement would be 
that foreigners would get our products cheaply while 
we paid high prices for them. But this we could not 
change if we would. These taxes would be very 
frankly what almost all other taxes are practically,- — 
taxes on consumption; and it would be quite impossi- 



254 THE PEOPLE'S HEPJTAGE. Book III 

ble for our government to tax consumption in a for- 
eign land. On the other hand, if the foreigners did 
not have the tax to pay on our productions, neither 
would they receive the benefit of the tax in its per- 
capita division. The simple result would be that we 
as a community would experience the effects of our 
system, and other communities would receive the 
effects of their systems. This is certainly all we can 
expect in the management of our foreign relations; 
he who attempts more than this is likely to compass 
less. To try to make other communities unwittingly 
share our burdens while not participating in our 
advantages is a kind of political legerdemain which 
has been often attempted, but which we may content- 
edly leave outside the scope of our ambition. 

The problems created by the indirect effects of our 
measure, however, are to our thinking much more diffi- 
cult of satisfactory solution. These start with the 
increased wages of labor of all grades, and especially 
the lower grades. If we are not totally mistaken as 
to our measure, it would, whatever it failed in doing, 
raise wages very decidedly. Wages enter largely 
into the cost of the manufactures we are just begin- 
ning to export in such splendid quantities. Increased 
wages would naturally mean increased cost of product. 
But granting this, how should we maintain ourselves 
in the markets of the world. What would become of 
our waxing export trade, now so fondly hailed as the 
panacea for our labor troubles, social discontent, and 
political mugwumpery ? 

In reply we may point out that the present con- 
stantly-growing success of the United States in the 
competition for foreign markets for manufactures is 



Chap. xvi. PITFALLS, REAL AND IMAGINARY. 255 

founded upon the comparative cheapness of well-paid 
labor. Our workmen are undoubtedly in general paid 
higher wages than those of any competing nation, and 
yet our organization of industry has been so effective 
that in almost all the main lines of manufacturing we 
have been able to produce goods which triumphantly 
meet the world's competition. The obvious conclu- 
sion is that costly labor is effective labor; that while 
it costs more per day, it costs less per brain-unit (let 
us say) than poorly-paid labor ; that if we wish to hold 
and increase our export trade we should adopt any 
practicable means to raise still further the standard 
of our labor, even at the cost of a further rise in wages. 
We think it manifest that our redistribution of the 
income from the People's Property in Ideas is just such 
a means. It would raise wages because it would give 
workmen a chance to feel the pulse of the whole labor 
market before contracting to render their services ; and 
it would raise the standard of labor by substituting the 
incentives of hope and ambition for the goads of appre- 
hension and privation. We have no doubt it would 
also ultimately cheapen production, just as has been 
the case with our earlier experiment in well-paid labor. 
Accepting the dicta of certain well-known economists, 
we might dismiss all doubts on this point, for they 
have demonstrated, even as Euclid demonstrates his 
propositions, that a high rate of wages necessarily 
means a high degree of economy in production. But 
this magnificent achievement of logic, it seems to us, 
demonstrates our position to a wasteful excess; and 
with a careful frugality of such fine intellectual fruits 
let us resign that part of them which w T e do not need. 
Let us fix our logical frontier at the less imposing but 



25G THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

stronger position that normally the best-.paid labor, 
under conditions of free competition, is the most 
economical. 

The taking up of this less advanced position is prac- 
tically an admission that under conditions of flux, un- 
settlement and disturbed equilibrium the increased 
cost of our labor would not secure increased, or even 
equal, economy of production as compared with the 
present status. This is, in fact, almost self-evident; 
every practical man will at once assert it as beyond a 
peradventure. The immediate effect upon our ex- 
ports would be, at least in many cases, to increase their 
cost, and close some of our markets against us. The 
practical realization of the benefits of labor still better 
paid than at present, would demand some important 
readjustments of our industrial system. Such read- 
justments are not accomplished in a day. And while 
they were in process of accomplishment we should 
undoubtedly lose ground in the foreign markets. 

We might ourselves bear with some composure the 
charge of damaging the prospects of export trade, 
but evidently we do not represent the general state 
of mind upon this question. To read the current 
editorials of our able journals or to listen to the opin- 
ions of business men upon this subject is calculated to 
make one think that the development of a large export 
trade, especially in manufactures, is our sole hope of 
heaven, — or rather our only way of escape from the 
Purgatorio of overproduction. Even economists 
whose vision usually extends beyond their nose have 
lent weight to the popular idea that the only possible 
way to rid ourselves of the excessive output of our 
manufacturing industries is to dump them on some 



Chap. xvi. PITFALLS, REAL AND IMAGINARY. 257 

far-off land whence they can never return to plague 
us. The cry of these expansionists is, A constant suc- 
cession of new markets, or we perish, smothered in our 
excess of manufactured wealth! 

Evidently there is some tremendous confusion of 
ideas underlying this unnatural aspiration. Why 
should we be so devoutly praying for new markets to 
absorb our surplus wealth when the denizens of our 
Inferno right at our doors are so sorely in need of it? 
Why should we assume so confidently that if our 
manufactories are once allowed to get fairly started 
they will produce a disastrous glut of goods, impossi- 
ble to dispose of within our own boundaries? Why 
should we in the same breath speak of the tremendous 
needs of our poverty-stricken people as impossible to 
satisfy, and the tremendous accumulation of goods as 
impossible to consume? Are we not laboring under 
some spell of self-deception, reasoning in a vicious 
circle of confusion ? 

We feel great diffidence in venturing to enter even 
the outer portals of this perplexing question of the 
intricacies of foreign trade. We can by no means 
attempt to solve it; we shall not even touch upon it 
except as it concerns the internal workings of our plan 
of reform. But one thing is clear, — there is no magic 
in foreign trade as distinguished from domestic. It 
is ultimately simply an exchange of commodities, con- 
summated largely through the agency of money. And 
it is all merely an incident of production by the wide 
and complicated division of labor; its function is to 
increase production by making possible a more perfect 
specialization of labor functions. Unless it increase 
production foreign trade is a pure loss to the nation. 



258 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

Now we suspect that much foreign trade is attended 
with serious loss to the nation. Of course it is not, on 
the average, attended with loss to the merchants or 
manufacturers who undertake it; if it were it would 
be promptly discontinued. But it may very easily be 
the case that our merchants and manufacturers can 
make a profit for themselves by means of a loss on the 
part of their workmen, — by employing them at lower 
wages than they could obtain if they had free oppor- 
tunity to utilize their labor to the best possible advan- 
tage. If, then, by giving to these workmen free 
opportunity for self-development we enable them to 
raise their wages so high that the foreign trade has to 
be abandoned, it is certain that the nation gains, how- 
ever much the manufacturers may lose. For this re- 
sult can only follow by the workmen discovering a 
more productive use of their labor than to manufac- 
ture for the foreign trade. A more productive use 
of labor means a larger income for society, a general 
benefit to the community. The damage which our 
plan would do to our foreign trade, therefore, would 
be demolishing a loss. It would be interrupting such 
a thriving trade as a certain man found his bright 
young son driving over his back-yard fence, — selling 
off a roll of gold eagles he had found in his father's 
desk for a silver dollar apiece. 

We think it can hardly be denied that our measure 
of opportunity for all would, wherever its influence 
reached, strike a tremendous blow at this sort of gain- 
ful traffic. No truer blow for freedom could be 
struck; it would be a chapter in the abolition of the 
slave trade. "Wherever men are held down by con- 
straint of circumstances to a lower grade of work than 



Chap. xvi. PITFALLS, REAL AND IMAGINARY. 259 

they might perform under free opportunity, a relic 
of slavery exists; and whosoever deals in this, in a 
measure deals in slave labor. We recognize that this 
is carrying the distinction to a rather fine point, since 
perfect freedom of opportunity is hardly practicable 
in this prosaic world. But the practical injustice con- 
stantly being done in this matter is the cherishing of 
these relics of slavery. We hear of a plentiful supply 
of cheap labor as if it were an element of local or 
national wealth. We need to realize that it is, on the 
other hand, an element of poverty to the nation or 
community; that dealing in it is dealing in slave labor; 
that the cherished schemes of our merchants and cap- 
tains of industry to enrich themselves by doing a thriv- 
ing trade, export or domestic, in the products of such 
labor are, from the standpoint of the community, sell- 
ing eagles for dollars. 

The tendency of one-sided competition to foster the 
slave-trade is a subject all too lightly touched upon by 
current economic science. It has long been a cardinal 
tenet of political economy that free competition can 
do no wrong. Although this pearl of the faith has 
been almost buried of late years under a load of con- 
ditions and exceptions in the interest of monopoly and 
the classes, it is applied in all its harshness to the ad- 
justment of the claims of labor and the masses. But 
both sides of the discussion seem to have lost sight of 
the real meaning of " free " competition. Legal free- 
dom to contract or to decline does not insure it. ISTo 
man receives the benefits of free competition who is 
not economically a free agent: — he must have, first, 
the power of self -development ; and second, the ability 
to wait, if necessary, for a market for his labor. With 



2G0 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

this broadening of the meaning of our term " free 
competition " we may subscribe, with hearty assent, 
to the doctrine that it can do no wrong. 

But judged by this criterion we fear that much of 
our " free " competition is anything but free. The 
regiments of modern industry, even in our favored 
land, are not clear of the incidents of conscription; 
and they are only too likely to be marshaled as an 
army of conquest to attack the economic independ- 
ence of lands beyond the sea. Still less is the labor 
of these other lands likely to be economically free; 
and the toil which, through the mazes of foreign com- 
merce, returns to us the value of our exports, is almost 
certain to be driven largely by the slave-whips of the 
human race, — hunger and destitution. Under these 
circumstances there is no certainty whatever that trade 
is a real benefit to any but the dealers in the slave 
labor, — the captains of industry and of commerce who 
conduct it. 

We think a close examination of the tendencies of 
our new policy of commercial and political expansion 
will show that the process is primarily a conquest. It 
is a conquest of the peoples — other peoples,- — by the 
people — our people, — and for — the captains. It 
binds heavy burdens, grievous to be borne, upon our 
home forces of industry, without one iota of profit to 
the burden-bearers. And it is a conquest which can 
never be accomplished under the aegis of true free- 
dom, economic and political; — to marshal the forces 
of industry and arms to effect it we must cherish, and 
even still further develop, our relics of slavery. 

Here is where our scheme of reform takes on a harsh 
aspect. To all this fantastic house of cards founded 



Chap. xvi. PITFALLS, REAL AND IMAGINARY. 261 

on conquest our measure of true freedom, — the gift of 
the power of universal self-development, — would be 
as a destroying angel. It would touch as with a divin- 
ing-rod the various structures of foreign commerce, 
and those which gained their profit from the loss of 
our workingmen would crumble at its touch. For 
truly free competition has something better in store 
for men than to make them food for powder or legion- 
aries for conquest of any kind. It would be a proud 
and joyful day for our workmen when their rising 
wages gave the death-blow to the last relics of the slave 
trade. 

We shall benefit as a community, by raising the 
efficiency of labor throughout the land to the highest 
possible standard. If it then prove to be too effective 
to be wasted in the cheap work out of which our cap- 
tains of industry have made such inspiring profits, we 
can solace the losses of these estimable citizens with 
the same pious consolation they have so freely offered 
to others, — that all steps in the progress of society 
are necessarily attended with suffering to some, but 
that the general good far outweighs the particular 
harm. 

The conclusion of the whole matter, it seems to us, 
— and it applies equally to foreign and domestic 
demand for labor, — is this: that our plan of universal 
opportunity of self-development would bring about a 
general efficiency and a high scale of general prices 
for labor. This could not well mean anything but 
general prosperity, and if a man's business should 
suffer under such conditions he would simply have to 
resort to the above consolatory maxim for comfort. 
"We do not for a moment admit that it would finally 



262 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

injure any really beneficial trade, foreign or domestic, 
but it would kill the trade in slave labor, and it would 
introduce a period of unrest and readjustment in 
which even mutually beneficial trade might tempor- 
arily suffer. 

It is no holiday task to abolish serious abuses, and 
their struggle for life will always to some extent un- 
settle society. But that society which hesitates to 
grapple with such abuses because they are strong is 
becoming decadent, and will in due course of time 
make way for the courage of new blood. The prizes 
which wait upon self-development will always infin- 
itely outweigh, in material as well as in spiritual 
wealth, those fading kingdoms of this world which are 
Satan's bribes to leave the old order in peaceful pos- 
session. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

" THAT NEW WORLD WHICH IS THE OLD." 

We think the reforming instinct is widespread and 
deep-seated in this generation. After the first blush 
of youth is departed, and we begin to face toward the 
shades, the problems of the race become our constant 
companions. However lightly they may touch the 
favored ones, however they may be crowded aside for 
a time by the imperiousness of personal trouble and 
sorrow, however the fast-moving panorama of life may 
engross our attention, thenceforth the undertone of 
suffering vibrates through all life's music. For the 
race has lost its youth, and can never again possess 
youth's outlook. It can no more be blithe with 
youth's irrational hope, or cruel with youth's cheerful 
unconcern. Whenever it faces toward the future 
these problems bar the way. The heart and conscience 
of the race gaze beyond these bars with a passionate 
longing that they may be broken, — that justice and 
mercy may be done, and mankind set free to be happy. 

To those who stand most aloof from this feeling its 
effects seem spasms of destructive energy. The uni- 
versal reforming power of our age has tilted at all 
sorts of windmills, has challenged almost every cher- 
ished institution of society, and its zealots are at this 
moment hotly attacking the central pillars of our 
social order. Small wonder that such things seem to 
the conservatives like ruthless destruction of the 
ancient landmarks; that to their eyes they bear evi- 



264 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

dence of an insane readiness to cast our civilization into 
the crucible and reduce it again to its primal chaos. 
Viewed from this standpoint the war of the reformers 
seems to be against everything to which man's affec- 
tions can attach themselves, everything that can 
develop personality and foster memories. 

Our own belief, however, is that these extremes in 
which the reforming impetus manifests itself are the 
light effervescence of the movement. The heart and 
conscience of the race are not only sound, but conser- 
vative. They stand behind the reforming spirit, but 
do not sanction its excesses. They have no childish 
delight in change for the sake of unsettlement; they 
do not wish to wipe out the past and -begin anew. 
The landmarks of our social order are as dear to them 
as old homesteads and firesides; the institutions under 
which they have lived are a part of their personality. 
Their protest against the established order may seem 
to cover all its most characteristic points and to be 
almost equivalent to destructive nihilism, but a close 
analysis will show that it is not directed against the 
vital organs and forces of our present social body, but 
against a blight that has spread itself through all these, 
— the influence, the trail of the Beast. 

The intent of our scheme of reform, therefore, is 
to remove this blight, — to trace the sinuous trail of 
the Beast through society and to extirpate its evil 
influence at the source. So far is this from con- 
stituting a destroying influence that it is on the other 
hand essentially constructive. So far is it from tend- 
ing to confuse the design and impair the essential 
unity of our social structure that the accomplishment 
of its task of removing the disfiguring excrescences 



Chap. xvii. "THAT NEW WORLD WHICH IS THE OLD." 235 

will for the first time reveal to us the essential grand- 
eur of the edifice. 

For structurally our edifice has not been changed 
when the measure we have advocated has become an 
actuality. It is still founded on the principle of com- 
petition, working by the method of free contract; it 
still proclaims as its essential truth the maxim that to 
each man belong the fruits of his labors. It has estab- 
lished no Procrustean couch to mutilate human talent 
into a semblance of sameness; rather it cherishes and 
seeks to develop as its most valued possessions men's 
natural diversity of powers. But the sphere of com- 
petition is now widened to take in the whole race, and 
free contract is no longer a privilege of the prosper- 
ous. The germs of talent which have hitherto been 
crushed under the weight of non-competitive privilege 
are now opened to the sun and air, and if we mistake 
not will in times to come show the world some in- 
stances of inequality as yet beyond its most roseate 
dreams. 

Under this new regime the man of great ability and 
industry would still 'become rich, the lazy and shift- 
less would remain poor. The riches of the one and the 
poverty of the other would each be upon their creator 
to dispose of as he saw fit. Then as now men would 
choose their occupations; then as now they would have 
to make a second choice if their first one proved to be 
a mistake. The proverbs of Solomon would not lose 
their force in our new state of industry; the good 
advice of the Self-Made Man could still be accepted 
at the customary discount. Parents would still incul- 
cate thrift and self-reliance by way of preparing their 
children for their life-work, — and would feel much 



2G6 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book in. 

less like hypocrites in so doing than is now the case. 
Children would still start out to conquer the world by 
new and improved methods, and would come round 
to the old ways again with old-time celerity. In gen- 
eral men would still come and go, work and rest, plan 
and act, as to them seemed best. The government 
would be substantially as unobtrusive as at present. 

Realizing, then, first and foremost, that we are still 
in our old familiar home, and that on every hand we 
see the well-known landmarks, let us look curiously 
around us to see what changes have been accomplished 
by the new influence we have invoked. 

We shall not have to look far. One tremendous 
change at once claims our attention which alone would 
give a new expression to the social landscape; — the 
Inferno has vanished! The threat, the close pursuit, 
the actual presence of utter destitution have ceased to 
haunt the lives of men. Hunger as an economic force 
has passed away. 

To realize the far-reaching results that will surely 
flow from this will tax our imagination to the utmost. 
For in passing from the domain of fear to that of hope 
we have left the brute era of development and entered 
the human. We have left the struggle for existence, 
the survival of the fittest, the reign of universal strife 
and incarnate selfishness; and have taken up the aspira- 
tion for self-development and for universal coopera- 
tion in commanding the forces of Nature. 

So far as our civilization is founded on the Inferno 
it is founded on brutish forces; and it exhibits their 
effect throughout its structure. It is the desperate 
struggle to escape from the terrors of the Inferno that 
furnishes the brutal element in our society. It is this 



Chap. xvii. "THAT NEW WORLD WHICH IS THE OLD." 267 

that throws the name of self-preservation over almost 
any form of short-sighted selfishness and inhuman 
crowding of competitors. If money-getting be a des- 
perate struggle for life with one's neighbors, naturally 
no quarter is likely to be asked for or given. And 
the cynical disregard of the humanities, the belief that 
all is fair in money-getting, the habit of elbowing all 
competitors in the contest for the best places, become 
second nature, and often continue to rule a man's 
actions by force of habit long after the Inferno has 
for him receded far into the distance. He becomes 
in the beginning and remains to the end an Ishmael- 
ite, meeting all men as enemies. He feels that his suc- 
cesses have been won by conquering other men; that 
his wealth is the fruit of his impoverishment of others. 

We have no intention of holding up this sketch as 
a full-length picture of our present society. But no 
one can deny that the brutish motives we speak of are 
terribly in evidence in the business world, and are not 
confined to its lower levels. And under their sway 
the processes of human evolution are substantially 
those of the " dragons that tare each other in their 
slime." Brutes, as we know, possess no power over 
Nature. They accept as a finality Nature's unaided 
bounty, and strive with each other, species against 
species and individual against individual, for its pos- 
session. The weaker die, the strongest live; and this 
is the "survival of the fittest," — "fittest " of course 
meaning ablest in depriving their fellows of the means 
of sustaining life. 

That this precise process of evolution obtains largely 
to-day in human society we fear is beyond successful 
contradiction. One is led to believe that its accept- 



268 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

ance as our popular philosophy of business is almost 
universal. Political economy, in fact, has the dubious 
honor of having anticipated the modern evolutionary 
school in the enunciation of doctrines bearing the dis- 
tinct implication of brutish evolution. The Malthus- 
ian doctrine that population necessarily tends to press 
upon the possibilities of subsistence, the Wages Fund 
doctrine that a predetermined amount of money is at 
any specified time devoted to wages, that wage-earners 
can do nothing to increase the fund, and hence are 
helpless to better themselves except by diminishing 
the number of the sharers in it, — these are luminous 
expositions of the process of brutish evolution. And 
an examination of current business conceptions will 
we think show that the ways and means of procuring 
a livelihood are in an astonishing number of cases con- 
sidered as coming under these limitations, — that in the 
popular mind the process of making a living means, 
not creating it, but taking it away from somebody else. 
The trades-unions are a typical case in point. Their 
philosophy is one of limiting the sharers in their trades. 
We do not claim that it is not effective within certain 
limits, but — it is a process of brutish evolution. The 
seekers after easy positions, " good things," " soft 
places," are all adherents of this type of evolution. 
The wealth they pine for is already created; their 
problem is merely to get it into their own hands. The 
ordinary merchant looks on a competitor as some one 
who will try to force him to divide his all-too-scanty 
gains; the ordinary doctor or lawyer guards his prac- 
tice as if it were his game preserve. The man of in- 
dependent means who tries to do some real work is 
reproached with depriving a poor man of his living. 



Chap. xvn. " THAT NEW WORLD WHICH IS THE OLD." 269 

All through the business and social world we find it 
generally true that a man's work to make a living is 
directed against his fellows, — that he is oblivious of 
the possibility of adding to the world's wealth, and 
merely solicitous of sharing in that already in exist- 
ence. 

Now this general habit of thought and action belong 
clearly to the brute stage of evolution. If it were 
universal, if all men bowed to the decrees of Nature 
and knew of no possible wealth except that actually 
in existence, — then the parallel between brutish evo- 
lution and human evolution would be just and lumin- 
ous. Then increase of population would constantly 
press upon the bounds of subsistence, and an increasing- 
number of wage-earners would divide into ever more 
minute portions a stationary or diminishing fund. 
Then the terrible crush around the Inferno, the Ish- 
maelitish strife of business, the fierce greed for the best 
places at life's banquet, would be — not, indeed, pleas- 
ant or edifying, but — logically necessary. For it 
would simply be a choice of which should die, and no 
man could be blamed for preferring to be one of the 
survivors. 

But since history began there have always been a 
few men who refused to accept Nature's free largess 
as a finality. They strove to gain command of her 
powers, — to scratch the earth and make it yield more 
food, to fuse the stone and shape the extracted metal. 
Their progress, though considerable, was slow until 
our Wonder Century, but since that beginning was 
made it has proceeded by leaps and bounds. We are 
still in the beginning of this development, and it seems 
like transparent folly to stop now to remark upon its 



270 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

achievements. But one tiling it lias shown beyond 
doubt, — that the parallel between brute development 
and human development has absolutely no present 
validity. We talk of Nature's niggardliness, but it 
is a faint memory. We do not believe in it ; we know 
well that human cooperation can put to utter rout all 
of Nature's bounds to subsistence. The niggardliness 
is man's, or a product of our social organization and 
adjustments. The only efficient cause of scarcity 
to-day is a lingering in the brute stage of develop- 
ment. And the cause of our lingering in the brute 
stage of development is the Inferno, with its paralysis 
of hope, the human motive-power, its universal threat, 
its breeding of mutual distrust and enmity, and its 
inculcation of strife where cooperation is the only 
Open-Sesame. 

We are aware that we cannot claim unanimous 
consent for this proposition. Sociologists and econo- 
mists of recent date and of unimpeachable standing 
assure us that human progress flows, exactly as prog- 
ress in general flows, from the struggle for existence. 
" Of course," they admit, " ambition and other gilt- 
edged motives make a little show in select conditions; 
but as a broad biological fact, hunger and similar 
rudimentary spurs, which really mean imminent de- 
struction, constitute the only means of overcoming 
man's aversion to work. The penalty here, however 
disguised, is the same penalty that is inflicted on the 
weaker in the brute creation, — death, or the inability 
to leave descendants. This spectre calmly sitting on 
our door-step is of course unpleasant, but it is really 
our salvation. Remove it, and the race would lapse 
into barbarism through failure to labor effectively." 



Chap, xvii, 'THAT NEW WORLD WHICH IS THE OLD." 271 

We have already shown how impossible it is for 
hunger or any related motive to elicit the work on 
which our present civilization rests. But a further 
most momentous weakness in the above-recited phil- 
osophy is the assumption that there is any real strug- 
gle for existence in society as at present constituted, — 
that the unsuccessful die, or are unable to procreate 
their kind. As a matter of fact our present society, 
after having beaten the economic life out of its vic- 
tims, does leave them physical existence, maintained 
largely at the general cost; and more, it not only 
allows them to leave descendants, but they are actually 
the most fertile portion of the race! 

Thus our present system of human evolution utterly 
fails of the harsh merit of brutish evolution, for the 
struggle for mere existence is suspended. Evidently 
the only possible safety for the race, such being the 
case, is to replace it with the struggle for real life, — ■ 
to breathe into the dry bones of these economic 
corpses the life-giving principle of hope, with power 
of self-development, leading every human soul to 
strive and aspire. As a broad biological and psycho- 
logical fact we maintain that hope and aspiration are 
the only motives that can be depended on to elicit 
sustained and intelligent effort from the whole range 
of human life; and so long as they are ignored, so 
long must the problems of the Inferno remain insolu- 
ble. With their strong incitements working on all 
humanity, a new power of civilization would be born. 

When, therefore, hunger as an economic force has 
been abolished; when every man holds in his grasp 
the means of self-development, and begins to look 
around him to see where lies the best field for his 



272 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

labor, — then it will soon become apparent that an in- 
creased command over Nature is the only rational goal 
toward which to strive. To compass this end will 
require patient training, steady self-control, mutual 
confidence and capacity for cooperation. But above 
all else it will require leadership, — capable leaders, 
and the ability and willingness to appreciate and fol- 
low them. Worthy leaders and appreciative follow- 
ers, cooperating to secure increased command over 
Nature, and to work toward their own self-develop- 
ment, — this is indeed an ideal of human, as opposed to 
brutish, development. 

How to secure strong leaders is a problem that 
may well cause one to think long and seriously. But 
probably no one means will be so efficacious as to 
appreciate them. Under a system of universal self- 
development it may be presumed that almost every 
man would strive to attain to leadership. If almost 
all of them failed of this high goal, — and how many 
of us can ever reach our ideals? — they would at least 
appreciate the difficulties of the task; and men who 
can do this will make better followers than if they 
have been withheld from even aspiring to leadership. 
And the leaders who would command the respect of 
such followers, and successfully lead the advance to 
further mastery over Nature, must needs be no char- 
latans, but full-statured men! — men who could com- 
mand Nature and who would not need to elbow their 
fellows. "What untold wealth would it not be worth 
to our World if she could once relegate definitely and 
forever to the rear ranks the troops of blind, purblind, 
contemptible, dishonest, and mountebank leaders who 
now by favor or filthy lucre, or accident of birth or 



Chap. xvn. "THAT NEW WORLD WHICH IS THE OLD." 273 

position, seek to edge into positions of high command! 

With the serious thought and best talent of our 
social forces given to the direct assault upon the 
powers of Nature the increase of command over her 
forces would undoubtedly be enormous. We antici- 
pate that the wealth flowing from such a development 
of wealth-producing industry would be so great as to 
throw utterly into the shade the wealth-detaining pos- 
sibilities of the easy positions and " soft places." If 
this prove to be so, the excessive crush around those 
positions would cease, talent would flow from them to 
the uncrowdable wealth-producing occupations until 
the balance were adjusted again, and elbowing and 
Ishmaelitism would vanish from among us. When 
this had come to pass human development and brute 
development would have definitely parted company. 
Thenceforth men would pursue their material welfare 
by adding to the World's material wealth, — not by 
displacing the participants therein ; cooperation would, 
for the human race, have supplanted the struggle for 
existence. 

Of course we do not mean to imply by this that the 
distributive as opposed to the directly productive pro- 
cesses are a drain instead of a benefit to society. The 
merchant has a part to perform in the social economy 
as necessary as that of the manufacturer or the farmer. 
But his necessary part is simply that of an adjunct to 
wealth-production, — to get the goods into the hands 
of the consumer with as little friction as possible. 
Anything more than this, — anything in the nature of 
organized wealth-detaining,- — is a survival from the 
brute process of development, — to produce nothing 
but seize all that is possible. 



274 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

Another most momentous result of our redistribu- 
tion of the Income from the People's Property in Ideas 
would be the passing of the Charities of Condescen- 
sion. Our beautiful classification of charity into its 
two branches, on the elaboration of which we have 
expended so much thought and labor, would be ren- 
dered utterly useless. There would, we suppose, still 
be charity, but there would be no condescension and 
no self-abasement. People would forget that there 
ever had been such a charity, and the profound his- 
torians of coining centuries would get beyond their 
depth in trying to explain how it was that in the nine- 
teenth century men could give alms in the sacred 
name of love, and yet with coldness, disdain and arro- 
gance in their hearts. 

Of course with the Charities of Condescension 
would pass away the lucrative business of soliciting 
charity. The blind, deaf and dumb man with seven 
small children to support would no longer perambu- 
late the streets with his organ. The well-dressed gen- 
tleman who by reason of some miscarriage in the mails 
found himself without funds in a strange city, would 
cease to solicit his confidential loans. Women would 
no longer exhibit the illnesses of borrowed or hired 
babies before gaping crowds in order to touch the tear- 
founts of the passers-by. Imposture of every kind 
would find itself convicted before it opened its mouth. 
If perchance the undoubted fondness of mankind for 
being humbugged should leave a small opening for 
such persons still to pursue their trade, ridicule of the 
deluded sentimentalists would soon, we think, effect 
a cure. For it would be as certain as anything could 
well be that no one need beg. If anyone did find him- 



Chap. xvn. "THAT NEW WORLD WHICH IS THE OLD." 275 

self by accident in a strange town and penniless, the 
telegraph could be made to identify him and procure 
him enough money to pay his expenses home, — and 
the cost thereof could be charged against his account 
at the registry office. 

In fact by abolishing the Charities of Condescen- 
sion root and branch our scheme would in a remark- 
able way " kill two birds with one stone " ; — it would 
abolish the real cases of suffering, which sadden the 
thinking people, and also the cases of pure imposture, 
designed to part sentimental fools from their money. 
It is this double cost, double drain of sympathy, and 
double ineffectiveness which constitute one of the 
most telling arraignments of the monumental system 
of waste embodied in our present charities. 

Another abnormal excrescence upon our social 
structure would necessarily vanish with the Charities 
of Condescension. We allude to the extensive ma- 
chinery by which organized charity seeks to levy 
tribute upon the devil's activities. The church fair 
is the typical instance of this class. The significant 
fact characteristic of them all is that money is ob- 
tained for charity, or some other " good " cause, from 
people whose main or sole object is pleasure — or 
something worse. A magnificent ball is held, with 
a free-handed sacrifice of seed-grain, and other pau- 
perizing incidents, and the " net " profit is given to 
charity ; or a gold watch, donated by some enterprising 
jewelry firm, is given to the person making the best 
guess as to the number of seeds in a certain pumpkin, 
(at ten cents per guess) : — proceeds to go to the 
home for reformed gamblers ; or funds are provided 



276 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

to sustain mission services in the slums by holding a 
game of forfeits in the church parlors, the drawing 
power of the show being its license to uproarious 
practical jokes and horse-play. 

We say " seeks to levy tribute." We do not mean 
to express doubt as to the actual provision of large 
sums of money for " good " causes in this manner. 
But we fancy there is a return tribute exacted. It 
is a tragi-comedy of Faust and Mephistopheles, and 
the important question is, Which is which ? The 
" good " causes evidently think that in this they are 
playing Mephistopheles, and that in allowing the 
devil a little temporary triumph they are merely 
lengthening the rope with which they propose in the 
end to garrote him. But we submit that His Satanic 
Majesty was the original creator of all Mephisto- 
phelean parts, and that it is unsafe for the " good " 
causes to attempt triumphs in such roles. While the 
bookkeeping of the patronesses of the ball may show 
several thousand dollars " net " profit from the bar- 
gain, it may be surmised that Satan's books treat the 
transaction differently. They more likely show a 
payment of a sum of money from the corruption fund 
to poison the stream of charity at its source by de- 
basing the motives behind it. And Satan knows full 
well, what the lady patronesses do not at all believe, 
that it is preeminently the motive that counts, — that 
he gets a bargain of bargains in being allowed to cor- 
rupt the moral force behind a good cause at the price 
of a few thousand dollars 

It is a popular belief that by a little sanctified trick- 
ery the help of the devil can be obtained for good 
causes. The extent to which this belief is entertained 



Chap. xvn. "THAT NEW WORLD WHICH IS THE OLD." 277 

is surprising, and a little unsettling to one's mental 
balance. It requires no little self-confidence to be 
true to one's convictions against a crowd. We know 
a perpetual-motion machine is an impossibility, but 
as one confident inventor after another assures us he 
has done the trick we are forced to cling to our cer- 
tainty instead of being held fast by it. It is just so 
with the machinery for the accomplishment of noble 
ends. We know that no trickery of the moral laws 
is possible; that machinery is not a source of power; 
that no contrivance or arrangement, be it never so 
cunning, will cause our social machinery to exert 
more moral energy than has been applied to it. But 
our certitude is overwhelmed and dazed by numbers ; 
and as one invention after another is brought forward 
for getting the devil into our treadmill, and we are 
assured that they have been tried with excellent re- 
sults, we are forced to cling very tightly to our moral 
moorings to avoid being swept with the tide. That 
the vast majority have been swept away, that the 
popular idea of the way to accomplish noble and un- 
selfish ends is to bait a trap for short-sighted selfish- 
ness, — this is, we fear, undeniable. The whole moral 
landscape is filled with perpetual-motion machines, 
and if one demur to the principles on which they are 
built, the unceasing clatter which their motion is ever 
making is ready to confute him. 

~No more genuine contribution to the welfare of the 
race would be possible than to abolish this enchanted 
wood, — to sweep away the confusing maze of ma- 
chinery which now intervenes between motives and 
results, and let men gaze with unbewildered brains on 
the one, set over against the other. We would that 



278 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book ill. 

we had some method of accomplishing this broad 
result; and in default thereof we take great pride in 
thinking that our scheme contains a modest contri- 
bution to this great end. For if put in operation it 
would infallibly sweep to oblivion a large section of 
this false perpetual-motion machinery, and might, by 
the demonstration of its uselessness which would 
probably follow, gain a larger popular acceptance for 
the moral axioms which such machinery ignores. 

Nowhere would our scheme produce a more import- 
ant or more characteristic effect than in its treatment 
of the defective classes, and particularly of criminals, 
actual and potential. 

To-day the whole aspect of government and the 
social order is to these unfortunates one of enmity and 
repression. They are shut out from honest industry 
by lack of training as well as by the bounds of their 
environment; and no person or power moves a finger 
to help them to self-help. The policeman and the 
prison-warden are to them the representatives of 
organized society, and the functions of these officials 
naturally seem to be all on behalf of the rich. It is 
hardly surprising that the conception of justice as the 
underlying idea of penology does not occur to them; 
that in their minds law is a device of the rich to keep 
the good things to themselves, and is very properly 
checkmated by the forcible seizure on the part of 
the unfortunate of whatever may come within their 
power. 

In fact the criminals have simply anticipated the 
soberer part of society in discovering that the pos- 
session of wealth is not conclusive as to moral right. 



Chap. xvii. "THAT NEW WORLD WHICH IS THE OLD/' 279 

Only to the law-abiding classes property seems usually 
to rest on morally valid grounds, — perhaps because 
they usually hold or have held property; while to the 
criminal doubtless all property seems unfair discrimi- 
nation against himself, because the law in defending 
property acts always on the other side. 

We think that the discovery by the criminal classes 
that government was not entirely a conspiracy against 
them would lead to surprising and happy, not to say 
revolutionary, results If a burglar could be induced 
to register and draw his share of the Income, — (and 
we think it is here, and not with respect to the Mil- 
lionaires, that there would be trouble in securing a 
full registry), — law would have scored a strong point 
against lawlessness. For by accepting benefits from 
the government he would be forced to admit that it 
was in some measure his friend, and law-breaking 
thereafter would come to seem very much like wound- 
ing a friend. 

It may be that we have here summarized into a 
sentence the work of long years of slowly-dawning 
moral consciousness. We have no desire to claim 
suddenness for such a reformatory process, but to us 
it seems as sure as gravity. Honor may not reach a 
very high habitual standard among criminals, but that 
there is at least a rudimentary code of honor among 
them is almost certain. That any human being capable 
of entertaining the most rudimentary idea of honor 
could for long years receive each Income-day his due 
share of benefits from the government, and then at 
once return to his law-breaking, we think is incon- 
ceivable. Sooner or later, without another deed being 
done or a word being said for his reformation, the 



280 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book ill. 

patient persistency of society in heaping coals of fire 
upon his head would shame him from his evil courses. 
He would make no public profession and would sign 
no pledge, but would silently seek the paths of honest 
industry and become a law-abiding citizen. Thence- 
forth his place in the prisoners' dock and his seat in 
the thieves' rendezvous would know him no more ; 
and in heaven's chancery if nowhere else would be 
registered a soul that had entered upon the upward 
path. 

It is not our purpose, in outlining the influences 
for good which we believe would be found to reside 
in our measure of justice to all the race, to attempt 
to recast our penal system. What we have said does 
not in the least presuppose the disuse of our present 
machinery of justice. It would not be at all necessary 
as a tribute to sentimentalism to leave society defence- 
less against criminals in hope of their early reforma- 
tion. On the contrary, their reformation would be 
first shown by their ceasing to collide with our present 
laws. 

But one point that it would be highly desirable to 
secure would doubtless require some changes in our 
statute law. Provision should be made for allowing 
the criminal his share in the Inheritance, no matter 
how much he were under the ban of the law. As we 
have said, these funds are not in recognition of merit, 
but of humanity; they are not earned by this gene- 
ration, but are, on the contrary, a free gift from past 
ages, and their enjoyment should certainly not be 
barred to those who need them most sorely. Their 
regular coming would bear to the criminal a message 
of hope and regard from the heart of the race ; it 



Chap. xvn. "THAT NEW WORLD WHICH IS THE OLD." 2S1 

would go far toward proving to him that society's 
hand was laid upon him, not in anger, but for chas- 
tening. No depth to which humanity can descend 
should be too deep for the reach of this arm of parental 
love of the race. jNTo man would be a hopeless case 
or beyond the reach of reforming influences who was 
regularly visited by such a message of love and prof- 
fered forgiveness. 

This may seem like silly sentimentalism. It is 
true that the prevailing practical methods of treating 
criminals hardly lend support to such ideas. But the 
prevailing practical methods certainly cannot be 
charged with being unduly sentimental, and yet their 
results leave much to be desired. Perhaps, after all, 
a little more sentiment may be what is needed in the 
treatment of criminals. And as a matter of fact a 
little more sentiment is steadily being infused into the 
new methods, and with results that are oftentimes 
admirable. The Indeterminate Sentence system is a 
luminous example of such methods for treating crimi- 
nals. While our plan may contain much that would 
be vigorously repudiated by the spokesmen for this 
system, we desire to shelter ourselves under their 
skirts so far as to claim their authority for our con- 
tention that a patient appeal to the better motives of 
the criminal is not silly sentimentalism, but pays, — in 
dollars, lives, souls, happiness, or however else one 
may wish to rate it. 

Our general position is that, while criminals should 
doubtless in most cases be confined, for the safety of 
society, they should be hampered as little as possible. 
So far as they could in confinement pursue the busi- 
ness of making a living, they should be not only 



282 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book Ilf. 

permitted but encouraged to do so. Their Income 
should be paid to them to use at their discretion, 
within certain bounds, and if they were able to use it 
as capital with which to establish themselves in some 
business or some means of earning a livelihood, of 
course so much the better. If such a business devel- 
oped to a profitable extent it would give the prison 
authorities a new guarantee of good behavior, and 
would soon make it safe to extend large liberties to 
the convict. In this way he might be gradually 
absorbed into the great world of honest industry, and 
woidd simply cease to be a convict, without any 
formal opening of prison gates or proclaiming him to 
be a free man. Free he would be, however, — to do 
right; and freedom beyond this is not always a bene- 
fit. Of course he would be under surveillance, and 
any suspicious actions would compel a curtailment of 
his liberty; but for this very reason he would be likely 
to avoid suspicious actions, and we think that in most 
cases such an unheralded and noiseless exit from prison 
would be likely to be a permanent discharge from evil 
ways. 

Of course by parity of reasoning a prisoner should 
be subjected to the responsibilities as well as allowed 
the privileges of life in the outside world. In the 
first place he should be charged with the cost of his 
living, the " style " of which should be subject to his 
choice, within certain bounds; and this should be paid 
for out of his labor, or, failing this, from his Income. 
In the second place he should be made to maintain 
his duties to his family so far as possible, and for this 
end his Income might be detained from his control. 
In short, he should be made to feel that he had not 



Chap. xvii. "THAT NEW WORLD WHICH IS THE OLD." 283 

escaped any burden in coming to prison, and on the 
other hand had not been subjected to any unnecessary 
restraint. The line of division between the prison 
and the outside world should be made as inconspicu- 
ous as possible, with the purpose of allowing it to be 
crossed at the earliest possible moment. 

The corollary to this doctrine of the persistent hu- 
manity of the criminal, is that of the partial crimi- 
nality of men in general. While we certainly do not 
wish to make the way easy into prison, as we would 
make it easy to get out, we do think it should be rec- 
ognized that our present line of division between 
criminals and non-criminals is factitious. The main- 
tenance of such a sharp line tends to make the crime 
consist, not in the commission of evil, but in being 
discovered. "While of course it would be folly to put 
the stigma of criminality on any one until it was 
unavoidable, we think the indistinguishable blending 
of the white into the black might be profitably 
acknowledged by maintaining a watchful surveillance 
over a man who seemed to be drifting toward overt 
crime. A kindly warning from one whose position 
made it possible to speak with authority might avert 
many a sudden plunge from apparent respectability 
to degradation, and induce many a permanent change 
of course from the downward to the upward slope. 

As our payment of Income to all humanity would 
recall the outcast of crime as well as the outcast of 
poverty to share in the hope of the race, so it would 
bear a message of renewed life to the soul imprisoned 
behind the bars of imperfect faculties. The blind, 
the deaf, the dumb, the lame, the halt, the diseased, 



284 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book ill. 

would all be called to self-development. For the one 
talent has its place in the work of the world as well 
as the ten, and is as properly subject to the universal 
duty. It is only among brutes and brutish men that 
the weak are remorselessly exposed to the strife that 
selects the strongest. 

So long as the rule of competitive strife for division 
of the spoil obtains in its extreme rigor, so long must 
the defective be barred from hope of success. Before 
an unscrupulous adversary they are helpless, for he 
can select their weak points and defeat them with ease. 
But nature is not an adversary; she offers dumb resist- 
ance, indeed, to whomsoever seeks command of her 
powers, but no violence or trickery. The one talent 
is acknowledged by her as true coin just as surely as 
the ten. 

To our mind there is no doubt that patient work for 
the development of the defectives will result in finding 
a welcome place for them among our economic forces. 
They could surely add a definite amount of force to 
the advance of society upon Nature; they would thus 
add to the material wealth of the world ; and in the 
absence of ruthless strife for the possession of the 
added wealth, they would be able to claim and possess 
it. What has already been done in the industrial 
development of the blind and other defectives is an 
earnest of what may be done when means for such 
development are universally available, and the infec- 
tion of aspiration has spread to all the borders of 
society. 

It is, we think, impossible to overrate the advance 
in happiness and sanity which these stricken ones 
would experience from being welcomed into the ranks 



Chap. xvii. " THAT NEW WORLD WHICH IS THE OLD." 285 

of the world's workers. The man on whom the world 
depends, be it ever so lightly, for something, enters 
in some degree into the dignity of the creative forces. 
He is no longer forced to feel himself a burden to the 
world, a useless piece of lumber. Self-respect comes 
to him naturally, and he begins to look to the future, 
as well as upon the past. After all, his hope of achiev- 
ing happiness, once he be granted the consciousness 
of power, is not so different as it seems to be from that 
of his more favored brothers. 

But even if we are looking too far into the future 
in entertaining such hopes ; even if the imperfect 
classes be in the main doomed to continue as they now 
are, dependent upon others for their living, it is no 
less imperatively demanded of us that we acknowledge 
and act the truth for their benefit. In the gross ma- 
terialism of our present social theories we persist in 
considering them a charge upon the charity of living 
persons. But as a matter of fact the charity they 
receive is, broadly speaking, simply the charity which 
this generation receives from those gone before, — 
they are living upon the inherited Income of the race. 
And they have as much right to have their share in 
this Income freely given to them, without their cring- 
ing or fawning upon anybody, as have their more 
fortunate brothers, who receive their rightful shares 
many times over. 

How repulsive the thought that this whole class is 
now in effect set apart with the tramp and the 
loafer, — as having no right on this footstool, living 
here only by special favor of the breadwinners ! 
Who can think without shame upon the fact that our 
gross-minded World has denied them their heritage 



286 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

solely because of their misfortunes ! How immeasur- 
ably would the race benefit, as well as they, by 
extending to them as their right the privilege of 
standing " erect in self-respect," — of eating the bread 
of misfortune without feeling it to be the bread of 
dependence ! 



It cannot fail to be noticed that our division of the 
Income in recognition of humanity only, to the entire 
neglect of economic merit, would have one highly 
revolutionary effect on family relations, — it would 
award income to the women and children as well as 
to the men, thus ignoring man's " divinely-appointed " 
headship in the family. 

To many this would seem like opening the fountains 
of the great deep to overwhelm the world. It would 
thrust us into universal turmoil, would break up the 
beneficent order of our family relations, and, in fact, 
would cast us again into chaos. The passing of the 
patriarchate would probably inspire the utterance of 
more touching threnodies than even the passing of the 
Inferno. 

But the patriarchate is passing, — in present actu- 
ality, not in our hopes for the future. The threnodies 
began to appear freely many years since. Whoso- 
ever would study them in their glory should turn 
back to the law reports of over half a century ago, 
and note the decorous but strenuous protest, and the 
uneasy misgivings of coming chaos, with which the 
judges of those days unwillingly gave effect to the 
newly-enacted Married Women's Property acts, and 
similar legislation. Such threnodies have kept on 



Chap. xvii. "THAT NEW WORLD WHICH IS THE OLD. -1 287 

appearing ever since, in loving memory of the good 
old times so relentlessly passing away, and in depre- 
cation of the coming chaos, — which they have always 
located just around the corner ahead. 

Xow it is certain that, whether for good or evil, 
the family is, — has been for many years, — under- 
going a steady drift away from the idea of man's essen- 
tial primacy. It is charitable to assume that the 
ancient status was founded on a reason valid in its 
day; and if there were such a reason it must have 
been the absolute necessity of such a primate. When 
the very existence of the family depended momently 
upon its receiving efficient physical protection, when 
bread-winning meant slaughtering wild beasts, the 
head of the family was more than a figure-head. But 
long before any overt steps had been taken for abol- 
ishing man's titular headship, his real headship was 
seriously undermined. Under advancing civilization 
it became manifest that the true function of head- 
ship in the family was, not strife, but guidance; and 
the most liberal doses of ancient theory descending to 
modern days could not make it seem reasonable to 
suppose that man alone possessed the guiding faculty. 
As a matter of fact we venture to say that through- 
out the precincts of modern civilization the woman's 
power and responsibility for the guidance of the 
family are equal or superior to that of the man, — sub- 
ject, however, to certain economic disadvantages 
which oftentimes subject her to petty tyranny, and 
interfere with the free exercise of her powers for 
guidance. 

The threat of chaos which our terrified jurists saw 
in the Married Women's Property acts lay in the ad- 



288 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book ill. 

mission of the wife and mother to a share of the 
economic power over the family. If part of the main- 
tenance of the family were placed in her hands to 
give or withhold as she saw fit, evidently man's abso- 
lute power in the home had received a serious wound, 
and hence visions of chaos appeared to our far-sighted 
jurists. But even the camp-followers are now safely 
past this spectre-haunted spot. No present-day con- 
servative places his chaos in this harmless measure, 
which goes its humdrum way without eliciting the 
least comment: — he is anxiously scanning the coming 
measures for the next dose of chaos. The practical 
admission of even the most reactionary is that this 
measure of freedom for women, and their admission 
to economic power in the guidance of the family, 
have worked well, and have done no noticeable harm. 

Now our plan of distributing the Income from the 
People's Property in Ideas impartially to women 
and men would do for the mass of women what the 
Married Women's Property acts did for the select 
few. For comparatively few married women have 
any considerable property of their own; the bulk of 
our population subsist entirely on present earnings. 
But the Income would go to all the race, and would 
give to women of all social strata a taste of the 
economic power that goes with control over means of 
subsistence. 

That this would mean chaos, or even serious disor- 
der, in the family relations there is no reason to be- 
lieve. It would simply mean constitutional govern- 
ment in the place of autocracy by divine right, and in 
this country we need not try to prove that checks on 
absolutism are not disorderly, but lie close to the 



Chap. xvn. "THAT NEW WORLD WHICH IS THE OLD." 289 

foundations of true order. Furthermore, this eco- 
nomic autocracy in the family is already a thing of 
the past among the property-owning classes, and its 
threnodies have long since been sung with all neces- 
sary fullness. And among all other classes, we sus- 
pect, economic autocracy, and indeed family autocracy 
of any kind, has practically passed away. Its practice 
is doubtless limited to a few men whose minds are 
closed to the mental influences of the age; — but these 
are, of course, precisely the men in whose hands any 
large power is unsafe. When the enlightened have 
voluntarily resigned all traces of despotic power it is 
surely time to wrest it from the hands of the dull 
brute. 

The equal recognition which our distribution of 
Income would extend to women would reinforce the 
best tendencies of modern thought and practice. It 
would give the whole of the sex a power of self-devel- 
opment and independent action which would greatly 
hasten the world-wide movements of to-day tending 
toward their larger usefulness. Though the constitu- 
tional conservatism of the world seems to crystallize 
into dense opposition in the path of this movement, 
it is plainly irresistible. To find fault with it is to 
chide the ocean for its advance. 



The recognition of children as units of human 
society is a change of decidedly smaller scope than 
the preceding, but as firmly based in sound consider- 
ations looking to the general welfare. It is but a 
small, a very small, check on the absolute rule of the 
parents, yet the amplest refuge that appears to be 



290 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

feasible from the terrible oppression that in abnormal 
cases usurps the place of measureless tenderness. 

The primary need of every child is to be well- 
born, — to be welcome, to be cherished, to receive the 
priceless guidance, oversight and help which only 
love can furnish. Failing this its case' is so forlorn 
as to make the best-devised remedial measures seem 
almost pure impertinence. But practically the unfor- 
tunate cannot simply disappear from the earth, and 
solve their problems by giving them up. Life must 
be lived out to the bitter end, under sunny or cloudy 
skies; and no situation is ever so bad that it is not 
worth while to make the best of it. The help which 
can be given where creative wisdom has been mocked 
is always pitifully inadequate, but it is none the less 
necessary and beneficent. 

The child-saving work of our day is a noble exam- 
ple of the benefits flowing from a real charity of 
equality. It has revealed, for one thing, what an un- 
suspected amount of real, saving love, hope and faith 
is to be found in lowly conditions of life. These 
seem to be ample to cope with the problem so far as 
their side of it is concerned; and we have to-day the 
almost incredible situation that the most helpful work 
which has ever been attempted for the regeneration 
of the waste places of society is hampered, not by 
lack of the moral forces, but for need of compara- 
tively trifling funds. Who can think without shame 
upon the fact that the total annual expenditures of 
the Children's Aid Society in the principal city of 
the nation are greatly exceeded by the (reported) cost 
of a single social function dedicated to the deity of 
Display. Verily, the services of the kingdom of 



Chap. xvii. "THAT NEW WORLD WTHCH IS THE OLD." 291 

heaven are offered to us almost for nothing, yet we 
cannot seem to afford them; while on the other hand 
we find the services of His Satanic Majesty indis- 
pensable, even though they do come high. 

In this aspect our modest help for the helpless be- 
comes important. Where hearts are ready to assume 
the burden of soul-saving, the child's share in the 
Property in Ideas could smooth away the financial 
difficulties. No matter what shape the problem might 
take, the possession of such dependable funds in case 
of need could not well fail to be valuable. It might 
surprise many of us to the last degree to discover 
how ample, both in willing hearts and plenteous 
funds, are the World's resources for the solution of 
her problems;- — how largely the difficulty consists in 
the wide separation of the two elements; — what un- 
fathomable results would flow from the wise use of 
the plenteous funds to release for labor the willing 
hearts that are now bound in the chains of circum- 
stances. 



We think that any one who has followed us thus 
far in our survey of the new aspect of society, will 
admit that it' would show far more than a few detailed 
reforms ; — that the influence we have invoked is a 
general tonic power ; that it would wonderfully 
quicken the life of society, and give it greater vitality 
to outgrow its diseases and to slough off the scars of 
its wounds. This influence would primarily show 
itself in the new hope, new vigor, new freedom and 
new fraternalism in society; but all these would in- 
evitable- work to bring about another change which 



292 THE PEOPLE'S HEPJTAGE. Book ill. 

would be perhaps the most important of all, — the 
development of a new responsibility. 

One of the most discouraging facts about our pres- 
ent social status is the nerveless fatalism of large bodies 
of the poor, — and of no inconsiderable portion of the 
strata whose social connections are higher. Life pre- 
sents the aspect of an insoluble enigma to these peo- 
ple; they have tried to guess it, have failed, and now 
have definitely given it up. They " mean well," but 
do not mean it very strenuously; and they have no 
notion of suffering for their good intentions. The 
consequence is that they act with childish unconcern 
for the necessary effects of their acts, and especially in 
their economic relations with their fellow-citizens 
they are a disturbing force of great importance. 

Including those whom this description fits par- 
tially, as well as the pure types, we fear they are 
numerous enough to elect the president could they 
but act in concert. There is no danger of their doing 
this in political matters, but in the ordinary concerns 
of daily living they act with a nice unanimity in 
derogation of commercial honor. Their word is as 
good as their bond, — and no better. They have no 
tangible property, therefore courts are powerless to 
execute civil judgments against them; they take no 
thought for the morrow, therefore they cannot fulfill 
their promises ; and their word and bond are alike 
worthless. 

Of course the unrelieved black of this picture is 
only accurate of a comparatively small portion of 
those we are considering, but the general characteris- 
tics here sketched are widespread. Dispensers of 
credit know that the financially responsible are a com- 



Chap. svii. "THAT NEW WORLD WHICH IS THE OLD." 293 

paratively small and select class, the others who are 
morally responsible are almost as small numerically, 
and even more select. They group all the rest under 
the generic title " judgment-proof," or some similarly 
opprobrious name ; and find it practically necessary to 
assume that a man belongs in this class until he is 
proved to belong to one of the select classes. In other 
words, looked at with a business eye the world as a 
whole is irresponsible ; the responsible people are a 
small minority. 

The significance of this fact in the line of our in- 
quiry lies here: — these irresponsibles do not count 
among the positive, propelling forces of society. They 
may not be lazy, — (though the tramp is assuredly of 
the genus under consideration); — in fact many of 
them are hard and steady workers, but — they do not 
look before and after. They accept Nature's or cus- 
tom's bounds as a finality, and have no conception of 
determinedly assaulting them. The evolution to 
which their labors contribute is purely of the brute 
variety. Had we a community composed of them 
alone we could therein demonstrate beyond cavil the 
validity of the Malthusian law of population and the 
wages-fund law. 

To have the whole population financially respon- 
sible, — to have every man so regardful of his obliga- 
tions that he could not afford to let a judgment be 
entered against him ; — to the dispenser of credit this 
would seem like the millennium. Yet this result 
would infallibly follow from our redistribution of the 
income from the People's Property in Ideas. ISTot that 
we would make a man's share of Income accessible 
to the creditor on a simple contract debt, but that his 



294 THE PEOPLE'S HERITAGE. Book III. 

share of the Income would make him a property- 
holder. Almost every man whose aspirations for better 
things were quickened to a resolve by his possession of 
this seed-grain, would embody part of his hopes in tan- 
gible property. Many more of the comparatively poor 
would come to own their homes, many more would 
have definite business investments, many more would 
have considerable amounts of savings placed in vari- 
ous securities. But more important, even, than all 
this would be the advance in the commercial value of 
men's words. Men whose thoughts were bent hope- 
fully on the distant future could not afford to cast 
the least discredit on their financial engagements. 
And as we believe that our plan of reform would 
infect with new hope and new vigor the whole range 
of society, so do we also believe that it would make 
men quick to feel as a wound the disgrace of shirk- 
ing their own proper burdens. 

Perhaps no one aspect of the changes that our plan 
would bring about more fully epitomizes its spirit 
than this. Our vivified social body would be univer- 
sally responsible, universally composed of burden- 
bearers. This alone would make it a hopeful, a cheer- 
ful, a fraternal, an effective society. It is the multi- 
plied burdens fallen from ungalled shoulders that 
crush the burden-bearers of to-day, and consume the 
strength and mar the hope that make men archangels. 
It is the equitable distribution of the world's burden 
that will make it light ; it is the universal assump- 
tion of the yoke of society that will make it easy. 
And it is the glad and joyous freedom of fraternal 
service under a tempered yoke and a widely-shared 
burden that will most surely usher in a new era of 
unprecedented advance in man's power over Kature. 



BOOK IV. 

THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. 



CHAPTEK XVIII. 

THE NEW ASPECT OF PROGRESS. 

In the preceding chapters we have given a bare out- 
line of the changes in our social fabric immediately 
connected with the adoption of our plan of reform. 
But any force so deep-seated as that which we have 
invoked affects intimately every form in which social 
action is manifested, and its proximate and ultimate 
effects are often more important than its immediate 
results. They are also more difficult to trace and 
exhibit accurately, for the farther the stream flows 
from the fountain the more it mingles with other 
waters. But their importance makes it necessary that 
we should not ignore them in picturing our vivified 
society, even if we be unable to give them fully or 
with certainty. Society is an indissoluble whole, and 
it is this whole which we must survey, to the best of 
our ability, in estimating the advantages and defects 
of any plan of social organization. 

Let us therefore take up for consideration a few of 
the principal heads under which social activities are 
usually discussed, and estimate as accurately as we can 
the disturbances of equilibrium which would result 
under each as the result of our contemplated measures. 

And first of the onward-tending principle of our 
modern society; — progress. 

Progress we may consider as the manifestation of 
the life of society. While in strictness it is true that 

297 



298 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book IV. 

societies have existed and do exist without progress, 
we of the Occident can hardly look on such existence 
as life in our sense of the word. All our surround- 
ings, thoughts and forecasts include an assumption 
that progress is normal, necessary, almost inevitable. 
As an element in our social world we think of it 
almost as being fixed and immutable, as gravity is in 
the world of physics. 

It is, however, far from having become a depend- 
able fixture of society. In fact while the multitude 
look upon it as having been finally conquered and 
caged, men of a philosophical turn of mind are never 
tired of showing us by what a slight thread we hold 
it, — how easily the hand of time may turn backward 
upon the dial, and the modern world go the way of 
Greece and Eome. Make this or that slight change, 
they say, allow one or another tendency to develop to 
excess, and we shall find the ceaseless forward motion 
of several hundred years brought to a standstill, and 
the vast fabric built up by its advance left to decay. 

It is noteworthy from our point of view that not a 
few social philosophers have identified the efficient 
cause of progress as being in the last analysis simply 
the struggle for existence. If this be so, the freeing 
of the human race from the fear of hunger would 
seal its doom. It would become stationary, decline, 
and finally take its place again among the beasts. 

We have elsewhere considered this proposition with 
sufficient fulness, and given our reasons for believing 
it to be unfounded. Here it does not concern us. 
Here our problems of progress are problems that 
assume its continuance. For whatever be its life- 
principle, it is assuredly now of a vigorous and sturdy 



Chap. xvm. THE NEW ASPECT OF PROGRESS. 299 

growth. Whatever be its ultimate fate we must count 
upon its presence in the immediate future. 

But strange to say it is not as a welcome visitor that 
it abides with us. We should hardly be dealing in 
paradox if we declared progress to be the universal 
enemy. Undoubtedly a large part of mankind live 
in abject fear of it. While they cherish the ground 
that progress had won before their day, they distrust 
its advances made within their memory, and look for- 
ward with serious apprehension to its next forward 
movement. 

A large part of this manifestation of feeling is sim- 
ply instinctive, — the inborn conservatism of human 
nature. The minds of men differ almost infinitely in 
their grasp, and as the rate of progress is at any given 
time fixed largely by the power of the leaders, the 
slowly-developing minds of those in the rear are 
always undergoing a painful struggle to keep up with 
the procession. And even more conservative than the 
ideas are the habits, sentiments and associations of 
human nature. Ideas change, slowly but relentlessly, 
in the most conservative ; but habits and associations, 
once formed and settled, often remain to the end of 
life defiant of, and but slightly influenced by, the 
new surroundings. 

But this is not the problem. There is no harsh 
government in the realm of ideas, and while the con- 
eervatives feel vaguely ill-treated by the intrusion of 
1 he new leaven, they are in no way rudely constrained. 
But in the realm of economics it is otherwise. There 
the ideas of the leaders are, by the automatic action 
of economic laws, harshly forced on almost the whole 
frame of society, with accompanying loss of power, 



300 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book IV. 

property and position to those who are, either by ten- 
dency or necessity, conservative. This is the real liv- 
ing, throbbing problem of progress in our modern 
world. 

We are all familiar with the physic that has been 
applied to this problem in the past, — and indeed still 
is applied in the present. Maddened by their pain and 
sense of wrong men have tried to strike down the ruth- 
less demon, Progress, by breaking the machinery and 
obstructing the processes in which he was to their 
eyes embodied. Actual violence looking to this end is 
now definitely abandoned and laid aside as a failure ; 
but there is no doubt that the feeling of wrong and 
outrage lies as an obstructive tendency in the path of 
all economic reforms, — that society in the main still 
snarls and bites at the hand that is put out to proffer 
a horn of plenty. 

The loss and suffering which seem to be in some 
shape the price of all advance, economic or otherwise, 
are doubtless deeply rooted in the nature of things. 
They have been described as " growing pains," and 
the simile seems to us just and luminous. Leaving 
out of account all economic results, the process of 
assimilating new ideas seems to include, for the mass 
of mankind, a painful mental wrench and strain. By 
analogy we might expect to find in the economic 
world a similar period of stress upon the introduction 
of an innovation, to be followed by a period of read- 
justment, and a final definite gain. All this we do 
find in society as a whole, and no sense of wrong or 
outrage can well attach to anything so evidently 
natural. 

But the process which, viewing society as a whole, 



Chap. xvm. THE NEW ASPECT OF PROGRESS. 301 

is natural and benign, is harsh and unjust when viewed 
with reference to the individual social units. Evi- 
dently the synthesis which views society as an organ- 
ism, coordinating the functions of its individual parts 
as the brain rules the members, breaks down here. 
In a healthy organism no member is cast suddenly off, 
withered and useless, by a change which benefits the 
general body. But even were this the case, — and it 
must be admitted there are some biological processes 
akin to it, — it would fail to illustrate our social prob- 
lem of progress. For in the physical body the mem- 
bers are but parts of the whole, with no individual 
existence. Society, on the other hand, is a derivative 
unit; its component parts exist as individuals inde- 
pendently of its synthesis. In the one case the test 
of health is the welfare of the body; in the other the 
welfare of the units is the primary test. 

Viewing the problem of progress from the stand- 
point of the individual we notice this anomaly in his 
relations with the social body: — his welfare, gained 
through any normal economic activity, almost inevit- 
ably inures to the benefit of society; but, on the other 
hand, society's welfare, accruing from the sum of the 
normal individual activities of its members, does not 
with any similar certainty inure to the benefit of the 
individual. In other words, the contribution of the 
individual to society, granting his ability to con- 
tribute, is practically uniform and unfailing ; but 
society's contribution to the individual is highly un- 
certain, and often almost entirely lacking. 

The fact is, the individual member of society has 
never succeeded in establishing his right to participate 
in its welfare. He is apparently working in the 



302 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book IV. 

closest partnership relations with society, which exer- 
cises the full right of a partner to share in the pro- 
ceeds of his labors, but which nevertheless steadfastly 
denies that there is any partnership fund to which he 
on his part has access. Society is willing that he shall 
share the losses, but will not admit him to a share in 
the profits. Although there is manifestly valuable 
property belonging to society as a whole which could 
easily be made to produce such a fund of partnership 
profits, it has never been so used. The proceeds from 
it, on the contrary, have been used to reduce prices to 
society's customers to the end that business may be 
kept brisk ; — a rather unnecessary measure, it would 
seem, in view of the fact that society has a complete 
monopoly in the lines of its production. But if any 
objection be offered to this policy the obvious reply 
is always ready that all one has too do in order to share 
in the proceeds of this fund is to become one of 
society's customers, — the larger the better. 

The setting apart of the Income from the People's 
Property in Ideas would be substantially establishing 
just such a partnership fund. Such an institution 
would make no new levy on the individual: society is 
already the ultimate beneficiary of his most valuable 
work, — his contributions to the Property in Ideas. 
But it would establish these possessions as a trust fund 
composed of the contributions of individuals to the 
general welfare, and it would administer them for the 
general welfare by an universal distribution of the 
profits to the social units. And in its regular distribu- 
tion of Income to the individual members of the social 
body it would supply a constant demonstration of the 
essential unity of society in action and in welfare, — 



Chap. xvni. THE NEW ASPECT OF PROGRESS. 303 

that just as the activity of the members contributes 
to the life of the body, so also the life of the body 
spreads to the remotest members. 

Such a measure would practically abolish com- 
pletely the conflict between progress and the welfare 
of the individual. The individual would have a direct 
interest in progress, — every new conquest of nature 
would add to the People's Property in Ideas, and 
hence to the individual's income. Of course this 
would not be the immediate effect of an invention, for 
it would be held for a term of years as private prop- 
erty. But there would be a constant succession of 
patents ceasing to be private property, and falling into 
the People's Inheritance, and thus the individual's 
income from this source would be constantly increas- 
ing. Such a demonstration of the universal benefi- 
cence of progress would be too powerful to be ignored 
for an instant, and the race would soon take a position 
of joyful expectancy in straining their eyes to see the 
dawn of the coming day. 

We do not say they would cease to count the cost. 
This is not to be expected, or even desired. Growth 
is a normal, but not an easy process; it proceeds by 
stress and strain, and painful readjustment. Men 
whose slowly-acquired skill and knowledge were made 
useless by some new invention would not think lightly 
of the growing pains of society. But they would not 
feel themselves to be withered and useless members 
of society; its vital currents would still reach them 
in the shape of the funds for self-development, — the 
Income from the People's Property in Ideas. Sus- 
tained by these they could serenely encounter the task 
of readjusting themselves to the altered conditions, 



304 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book IV 

and would start out once more on their path of steady 
and purposeful endeavor. 

Tims the general progress of society would be con- 
stantly raising the general level of social well-being, 
and providing for every one a constantly increasing- 
power of self-development. But this would not in 
the least tend to reduce life to dull uniformity. On 
this broad and solid base of equal opportunity which 
bygone generations have bequeathed to their kind, 
men would rear their personal life-structures, each 
after his desires and acording to his powers. There 
would be no tendency to unnatural equality, none — 
or very little — to unnatural inequality. But the full 
range of variety which exists in men's natural apti- 
tudes and abilities would be fully developed, and the 
life-music of the race would sound the rich concord of 
infinite diversity, blending into one harmonious 
whole. 



CHAPTEK XIX. 

COMPETITION AND COOPERATION. 

One of the points concerning which the present 
frame of society is distinctly on the defensive is the 
assumed ferocity of its foundation principle. The 
socialists make much of the naked brutality and in- 
humanity of competition, and point out the identity 
of its processes with the unspeakable struggle for 
existence in the brute world. It is, they say, a car- 
nival of murder, robbery, cruelty, avarice and lust, 
disguised under thin veneers of respectability; and 
tends, just as the brute process of development tends, 
to the survival of the most brutal, — the " fittest " in 
the brute sense, the unfittest in the human. It is also, 
they further declare, the antithesis of cooperation, 
which is the really human agent in development, 
and until it is utterly eradicated from our springs of 
action there is no hope whatever of any amelioration 
of the evils which disfigure our society. 

The socialists really seem to have carried this 
point with the more thoughtful observers of our 
present social tendencies. They have brought it to 
pass that competition is rarely mentioned by these 
but in a tone of deprecation that assumes its evil ten- 
dency. In fact even among the hard-headed business 
men competition has lately fallen into disfavor, and 
the tendency of to-day is to lay emphasis on its limit- 
ing principles. All this makes it look very much as 
though the claim of the socialists, — that society is on 

305 



306 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book IV. 

the eve of a sudden transformation to socialism,— 
were not entirely without foundation; and numerous 
persons who are in no way wedded to socialism by free 
choice, yet look on its coming in the near future as 
inevitable. 

To ardent souls the promised land seems always 
just at hand, and to constitutional conservatives the 
evil days are always threatening; but we think both 
friends and enemies have overrated the forwardness 
of this movement. The elements of strength in the 
competitive system have evidently failed to receive 
proper consideration. It is not merely that it still 
has at its back the hosts of the unterrified who cleave 
to it because it is " practical," and who think reform 
on humanitarian lines is pure moonshine, — such 
armies have a way of melting like snow when the 
hour strikes. It is not merely that it is in practically 
full possession while the discussion is proceeding, and 
that no adequate substitute is at all ready to displace 
it ; — possession with its nine points of the law counts 
for but little when its moral basis is gone. But it is 
precisely because its moral basis is still strong that 
competition yet abideth and faces the future with 
power. It is because it is to a great extent doing the 
needed work for the race, — because in its normal 
mean, unspoiled by excesses, it is really an efficient in- 
strument to secure cooperation, not strife, — that it is 
to-day in the full vigor of life, and, to our thinking, 
shows no signs of decrepitude. 

The reputation of competition is suffering to-day 
from an unproved charge. It bears the odium of pro- 
ducing the terrible injustice, suffering and social 
menace of our Inferno. In every new extreme of 



Chap. xix. COMPETITION^ AND COOPERATION. 307 

poverty and destitution which is discovered and spread 
before the world, competition is always close at hand. 
The poor vest-maker is forced by competition to accept 
starvation wages, or the tremendous competition for 
employment makes it almost impossible to get a 
situation. Thus the prima facie evidence always 
points to competition as the culprit, — and competi- 
tion can never prove an alibi. In this way the im- 
pression in the popular mind deepens into conviction; 
and grave discussions of social problems proceed upon 
the assumption that competition is pure brutality, — 
that the cases of extreme but non-culpable poverty 
which are so common in our great cities are neces- 
sarily the results of excessive competition, and that 
its action inevitably shows an uncontrollable tendency 
to develop to excess. 

But while all this study of the pathology of compe- 
tition is going on, the great normal world is almost 
forgotten. For competition is not less the ruling 
influence of the strong and prosperous than of the 
weak and poor; it guides the labors of man the arch- 
angel as truly as it constrains the destitute, despairing, 
imbruted member of the race. Under its banner has 
been effected the colossal cooperative achievement of 
history : — the advance by man to power over Nature's 
forces, the glory of the Wonder Century. The human 
method of development is within its scope as fully as 
is the brute method; the multiplication of power as 
well as the division of results. Evidently it is not the 
necessary and normal result of competition at which 
we shudder in the victims of the Inferno, — it is some 
ghastly perversion of its power. And it is likewise 
evident that we cannot afford carelessly to cast aside 



308 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book IV. 

in favor of an untried dream the influence that has 
motived the Wonder Century. 

jSTow we maintain that the crying evils which the 
victims of the Inferno have suffered at the hands of 
competition are due, not to its- excessive, but to its 
deficient, action. It is a dearth of competition that 
has crushed them, not an over-supply. For the normal 
action of competition presupposes a balance of power. 
It demands of both sides to a bargain the power to 
agree or not • to agree, — to close this contract if it 
be favorable, or to look elsewhere if it be otherwise. 
A one-sided bargain is as great a monstrosity in 
economics as a single-bladed pair of shears, or a tooth 
in an upper jaw with no mate in the lower. If the 
power exist on the one side, and no corresponding 
check respond on the other, it is no real process of 
competition ; no free bargain, but a license to op- 
pression. It is this oppressive power developing in the 
absence of competition which has strewn our high- 
ways with the ruins of men, and filled our Inferno 
with economic corpses. 

But the remedy ? It is certainly not to abolish 
competition and establish a premature paradise. The 
remedy for scarcity is — not famine, but — plenty; the 
remedy for oppression is, not less power, but more, — ■ 
more power of resistance. And so the remedy for 
the terrible pressure of competition on the very poor 
is the power to apply an answering pressure. The 
actual pressure is not very terrible: once given the 
power of meeting it, the oppressed would find it a 
merely healthful stimulus, and would profit by the 
warm glow of life and the growing courage which are 
its normal effects. Once give every man the power to 



Chap. xix. COMPETITION AND COOPERATION. 309 

consider a proffered bargain in the light of its appeal 
to his hope, and competition would no more be op- 
pressive; it would be as a two-edged sword, quick and 
powerful to cut the knots of intricate problems, and 
award substantial and living justice to the poorest as 
well as the most powerful. 

" But this," say the socialists, " would be but 
patchwork reform; it would merely be seeking to 
remove the clearly unbearable evils of our social sys- 
tem to the end that we might continue to cherish the 
lesser evils. So long as the mainspring of our eco- 
nomic actions continues to be purely and frankly self- 
ish, so long as we make the individual first in his own 
eyes and society second, — and a poor second, — so 
long will we bring forth the fruits of selfishness, — the 
bitter fruits of poverty, disease and oppression which 
curse the land to-day. It were vain to tend and water 
the plant of self; the more you develop it the more 
selfishness it brings forth. The only way out of this 
fundamental discord is to strike the chord of unselfish 
cooperation, and to let the chord of self pass out of 
sight." 

We are in entire accord with the socialists in seek- 
ing cooperation. The system that confesses itself 
against cooperation seals its own doom. Cooperation 
is the Open Sesame that commands the gate of the 
future; it is the only method by which pigmy man 
can cope with titanic Nature. But it is a great mistake 
to think that cooperation answers the w T and of senti- 
mentalism; it springs, like every other human action, 
from competent motive. And the motive which has 
produced all the serious cooperation that the world has 
yet seen is the appeal to each individual's self-interest, 



310 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book IV. 

which self-interest coalesces into mutual interest under 
the incentive of mutual desire and the guidance of 
wise foresight. This is the power which is wielded 
by the method of competition, and so far as we can 
see it is as likely to rule the future as it has been 
powerful to shape the past. 

The error of the socialists lies, we think, in suppos- 
ing that selfish action and altruistic action take oppo- 
site courses. But this depends upon the range of view 
which guides the selfishness. Aimed at some small, 
sordid, immediate advantage, selfishness is distinctly 
a non-social force, — an analogue in the human race 
of the brute struggle for existence. Aimed at a distant 
object of noble aspiration it becomes of necessity 
largely cooperative, and finds its success necessarily 
bound up with the success of others. Thus we are led 
to surmise that what we call selfishness is shortsighted- 
ness, — that the end the truly wise man seeks for his 
own good serves also his neighbor and advances the 
general good. The fixed stars show no parallax, 
though viewed from the opposite ends of the earth; 
and however wide apart may seem the present courses 
of egoist and altruist, we may dimly divine and rev- 
erently trust that judged by the distances of eternity 
they seek a common goal and are parallel. 

But the socialist will of course claim that the ulti- 
mate end of the general good is still infinitely distant 
from the present tendencies of competition, while he 
proposes to establish a commonwealth which aims 
straight for the general good as its primary and essen- 
tial motive. And his picture of this commonwealth 
is highly seductive; if it be true that we are perversely 
excluding such a reign of peace and plenty by harden- 



Chap. xix. COMPETITION AND COOPERATION. 311 

ing our hearts to his propaganda, we shall need to look 
well to our ways. 

But while we would not be thought hostile to the 
new causes that may be " God's new Messiahs " we 
cannot believe that the new causes bring new princi- 
ples of human nature with them; and judged by the 
principles of human nature which have hitherto ob- 
tained, the socialistic plan evidently displays one 
serious weakness; — it lacks motive. Let us examine 
for a moment its underlying ideas. 

The socialistic commonwealth proposes, as its 
fundamental principle, community action for com- 
munity ends. To be strictly logical it should propose 
a community motive. But it is manifest that no such 
thing as a community motive can exist, for the very 
good reason that the community as a sentient being, 
— a being that can aspire and resolve, — has no exist- 
ence However luminous may be the figure of speech 
which considers the social body as an organism, it is 
evident that it has its limitations. The essential 
differences between a primary and a derivative unit, 
— between a man and a society, — must be carefully 
kept in mind in reasoning upon this parallelism, or 
dangerous fallacies will result. However carefully 
we may examine the real community we shall fail to 
find any possible seat for the motives that influence 
a man, the primary unit of society; — we shall fail to 
find community desire, community motive, or com- 
munity will-power. The motive power of the com- 
munity is the resultant of the motive power of its 
primary units; and in tracing the action of any com- 
munity, egoistic or altruistic, to its source, we in- 



312 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book IV. 

evitably trace it to the personal motives of its individ- 
ual citizens, — that is to say, to selfishness. 

" But this formidable logic," say the socialists, 
" proves entirely too much. Even under the present 
reign of incarnate selfishness as the bond of society, 
we have had instances of noble community action for 
community ends.' It is, therefore, folly to say that 
the same cannot be true, and true to an infinitely 
greater extent, of a community framed for seeking 
the general good." 

We do not say, however, that community action 
cannot promote community ends; — we only say it can 
only be motived by individual motives. Twist and 
turn and involve the incitements to community action 
however we may, they all come back to the same test, 
— Do they appeal to the ruling motives of individ- 
uals? The socialists tacitly concede this point when 
they paint their highly-colored pictures of the 
general happiness resulting from their proposed 
reorganization of society. Of course this is simply a 
direct appeal to selfishness; — it seeks to introduce the 
supposedly altruistic organization of society by 
showing it to be better for the individual. Socialism 
could not hope to be retained if upon trial it should 
prove to be detrimental to the individual welfare, and 
the socialists would most energetically repudiate the 
idea that such a result could possibly follow. Thus 
the very prologue of the socialistic propaganda is 
found upon analysis to rest squarely upon those 
motives of individual selfishness which it so emphati- 
cally condemns. As a plan for superseding selfish- 
ness as the motive of society socialism is a failure, for 
it has no other motive with which to supplant it. Its 



Chap. xix. COMPETITION AND COOPERATION. 313 

altruism is simply a high-sounding name for enlight- 
ened selfishness; its socialistic regime is simply the 
same old society with a new outfit of machinery. 

Granting, then, that socialism proceeds from the 
same ultimate motives and seeks the same ends as our 
competitive society, the machinery through which it 
seeks its end constitutes its essential peculiarity. Let 
us turn for a moment therefore to examine the ma- 
chinery of socialism. 

This is not an easy task; for the creed existing as 
yet principally in the minds of its advocates, and its 
advocates having many and diverse minds, socialism 
itself takes many and diverse shapes. Its most philo- 
sophical presentation is simply as an alleged tendency 
of our present society to supersede individual action 
by collective action; and in this shape, not having 
built its glass house, it is substantially beyond 
criticism. But its most popular presentation assumes 
absolute equality of rewards for every member of 
society regardless of the importance of his contribu- 
tion to its welfare; and most other forms of its propa- 
ganda which have permitted themselves to take defin- 
ite shape tend toward this extreme, even if not going 
to its full length. Taking the movement in its most 
general form, therefore, we may say without serious 
inaccuracy that the essence of the proposed machinery 
of socialism is its method of abolishing the book-keep- 
ing of society, — of trusting in each member of society 
to furnish his due contribution to its welfare, without 
providing any direct incentive to exertion or check 
to inaction. 

By book-keeping we mean not merely the actual 
keeping of commercial records, but the universal 



314 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book IV. 

defining and allotment of individual shares in the pro- 
duct of social activities as a necessary preliminary 
thereto. The defining may not be done faultlessly; 
the awarding of the shares may be open to just criti- 
cism, but — they are defined somehow. Production is 
parceled out into individual shares, and in this way 
each individual has a definite rating put upon his 
services. When we consider how vast and intricate is 
the collaboration of different workers in the world's 
tasks, the mere formal appraisement of their services, 
defective though it be, will be seen to be a huge re- 
sult. And it is a result which at once applies the 
most powerful motive to quicken the intelligence and 
spur the diligence of the whole range of industrial 
effort. 

There are two main considerations to be weighed 
in appraising the value of labor. One of these is 
mainly quantitative- — so many hours' work done, tons 
lifted, acres ploughed. To appraise such items is 
comparatively easy. The other is primarily qualita- 
tive,— work of the higher grades, which refuses the 
ordinary criteria of value, and contains a large indi- 
vidual and originating element. To appraise this is 
really one of the deepest problems of social organiza- 
tion. Yet this complex of delicate and elusive values 
is readily and regularly appraised by the tests of our 
competitive system, — not perfectly, but sufficiently 
well to apply strong motives for the exertion of the 
highest possible powers. It is the exertion of such 
powers that justifies our figure of speech in calling 
man an archangel. Whatever may be said against 
our competitive civilization, this is assuredly a glory 
in its crown. 



Chap. xix. COMPETITION AND COOPERATION. 315 

INTow, as we have said, socialism largely proceeds (in 
imagination) upon the method of entirely dropping 
this book-keeping. This is not true of all its forms; 
some of them may propose to retain its simpler pro- 
cesses. It would be a comparatively easy and unim- 
portant matter for socialism or any other plan of social 
organization to keep a mere record of the quantity of 
ordinary labor performed by each individual, and 
award certain modes of recognition to it. But the 
present competitive method effectively tests the 
quality of labor, and by a method hardly open to so- 
cialism, — by opposing to the recognition which it 
seeks the criticism of an opposing interest. Every 
man sells his labor to another whose interest it is to 
depreciate its importance. It is easy to find fault with 
this method, but it applies a genuine criterion to work 
of the most valuable kinds, and furnishes a real test of 
its quality; and socialism has absolutely no means of 
performing these functions, so far as we can see. 

The motives on which socialism counts to fill this 
important gap are (1) conscience, and a sort of social 
honor; and (2) the mutual espionage of the workers. 
Citizens, feeling their obligation to the state, would 
be too honorable to repudiate it, and they would ostra- 
cize anyone who attempted to do so. We think it can 
hardly be doubted that these motives are, within their 
sphere, dependable; that their operation would, under 
favorable circumstances, insure a high-minded fulfill- 
ment of social duties, and a burning indignation 
against those who apparently shirked their share of 
burdens. It would thus bring about a regular, punc- 
tilious and systematic activity which would satisfac- 
torily perform many of the functions of society, and 



316 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book IV. 

would doubtless be an improvement in many ways on 
the present regime. 

But socialism has abolished the deep book-keeping 
of society. It has proudly committed the welfare of 
the social body to the honor of its individual members 
and the esprit de corps. The members have also, as 
we have seen, genuinely selfish motives to desire the 
welfare of society, because their own welfare is bound 
up with it: — though this point is not emphasized by 
the socialists. What will be the result? 

The most important point to be kept in mind here is 
this: the worker will not accurately know the results 
of his work. Especially and increasingly will this be 
true if he belong to the higher grades of labor, — the 
kind that takes thought for the morrow and crosses a 
bridge before coming to it. He will have his own 
opinion, of course; but no man can long trust the 
sanity of his opinion on this subject, unchecked by 
hard facts. He may exert himself with especial vigor 
and anxious attention some one year, let us say, and 
the general result of society's operations may be un- 
favorable ; or he may decide that the next year he will 
take his ease and avoid worry, and the general result 
may be magnificent. Either result would be deeply 
discouraging to strenuous exertion; he would come 
to feel that his laboring or abstaining was immaterial. 
Our worker's belief that he had rendered important 
service would be matched by the similar opinion of 
every empty braggart that he had moved the world; 
and both would thereby be made ridiculous. In 
short the thread of connection between cause and 
effect would disappear in a bewildering labyrinth; the 
worker's grasp of motive would be lost. 



Chap. xix. COMPETITION AND COOPERATION. 317 

Under these conditions, failing a special providence, 
the most important work of society, — the work that 
lays the unseen foundations for the visible results, — 
would simply not be done. The men who look before 
and after, who lie awake at night wrestling with the 
problems of the future, who groan and sweat in men- 
tal travail to make broad highways in the wilderness 
for the easy-rolling coaches of the multitude, — these 
men would be smitten as with paralysis. The scarlet 
thread which had been wont to lead them through the 
most labyrinthine mazes, — the thread of causation, — 
would be hidden from their view; and without it they 
would be as helpless as the blind Samson. 

We do not now speak of scientific discoverers, or 
great teachers, or statesmen, or artists, or any of those 
who work in the public eye, or seek their main reward 
in public honor. These might be reached by such in- 
centives, even if no others were added. But the work 
which seeks results of broad utility patent to the 
masses, yet seeks them by the processes of original or 
creative power open only to the few elect, — such work 
could not receive even the small laurel-wreath which 
is all socialism would have to bestow. Lacking recog- 
nition, lacking power to confer the sure self-knowledge 
evidenced by indubitable results, such work would die, 
and we should have it no more among us. And with 
it would die an elemental force of our modern civili- 
zation, — the process or power by which the most occult 
discoveries and achievements of the greatest minds are 
pressed into the practical service of all the people, 
from the least to the greatest. 

This we firmly believe would seal the death-warrant 
of modern civilization as we know it. Deprived of 



318 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book IV. 

this quality it would soou have run its course. Truth 
might still be pursued as it was in Athens, — for the 
excitement of the chase; but her earth-bound sister, 
knowledge, whom Athens never really knew, would 
no longer be' wooed as the modern world of industry 
has wooed her, — as only she can be won, — with the 
patient yet burning ardor which seeks permanent pos- 
session, and the command of her lowliest as well as 
her grandest services. Inertia would begin to reassert 
its power, society would lapse into a decorous conserv- 
atism, and the seemingly inexhaustible supply of 
motive power which has so long kept the world quiv- 
ering with the excitement of forward-tending fever, 
would take its leave. 

By careful consideration of these points, we think, 
anyone can convince himself that the abolition of our 
social book-keeping is not an elemental force. By 
obscuring the evidence of 'connection between efforts 
and practical results it weakens the incentive to 
the effort which seeks primarily such results. And 
this without reference to the question of selfishness or 
altruism. Even granting that a man's desires for 
such results were inspired by purely unselfish ardor, 
they would not issue in persistent effort unless the 
effort were manifestly fruitful. 

Yet outside of this peculiarity of omitting book- 
keeping, we are unable to see anything in socialism 
except a perpetual-motion machine. To this machine 
we apply a motive, — and as we have shown it is the 
same old motive of selfishness, under an alias. 
Through it we seek results,- — and as we have shown 
they are the same old selfish results men have always 



Chap. sis. COMPETITION AND COOPERATION. 319 

sought, though now called " the general welfare." 
From it, we are assured, will spring the most beautiful 
fruits for all the race, — results far beyond man's wis- 
dom to work out under the guidance of self-interest. 
Yet if we ask whence came this magnificent accession 
of power, wisdom, beneficence, we must rest satisfied 
with discovering that it is the innate principle of the 
machine. 

We can hardly go wrong in clinging still more 
closely to the rock-founded truth that machinery is not 
a source of power, — that a perpetual-motion machine, 
mechanical or moral, would contravene the founda- 
tion principles of the universe, and hence is impossi- 
ble. It will follow that socialism is restricted to the 
fruits of its motive, — the universal motive, — selfish- 
ness; that to make these fruits subserve the general 
welfare, it must be a wise selfishness; that given a wise 
selfishness, our competitive system is entirely com- 
petent to serve the general good. And miraculous re- 
sults in the production of wisdom are hardly to be 
expected from a method that is content to obscure the 
evidence on which self-knowledge must largely rest. 

And now let us turn for a moment from the task 
of making machinery originate power to the less am- 
bitious but more hopeful task of making it apply 
properly the power which is already at hand in great 
abundance. 

For our competitive system does originate, or at 
least evoke, human productive power in great abund- 
ance. In fact the exceeding plenty of motive power 
in our modern world is sometimes an embarrassment: 
we might charge competition with producing power 



320 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book IV. 

too abundantly were it not that the idea of an excess 
in productive power, when we come to think upon it, 
seems grotesque. The World may have at command 
more power than she can manage: she can certainly 
never have more than she needs. 

But the embarrassment of this surplus productive 
power lies in the conflicts into which it is drawn or 
forced. Men turn against each other the power of 
their right arms. Throughout the whole range of 
society's producing forces the noise of blows re- 
sounds. Our wealth-production, instead of being- 
founded on cooperation, seems to be founded on gen- 
eral hostility. And it is against this awful travesty 
of brotherhood that the socialists solemnly appeal. 

But before we become parties to a root-and-branch 
reformation of society in this particular let us inquire 
somewhat further into the desirableness of the social- 
ists' ideal. Is universal humdrum peace our only 
rational goal? Are all contention, all vigorous self- 
assertion, all crossing of one another's courses, de- 
structive and anti-social? Is the ideal social body a 
family of milksops? Are the meek and " 'umble " to 
monopolize the earth? Are a cool and steady nerve, 
a vigorous self-command, a fine physical courage, but 
relics of barbarism? 

For our part we are unable to conceive a healthy 
social state which should provide no proper outlet for 
combativeness. There is no real way of knowing one's 
strength except to oppose it to that of an adversary. 
The instinct of battle is deeply rooted in all virile 
races. It must have gratification; and with the pro- 
gressive dwindling of the opportunities for its exer- 
cise in actual war, we have seen an extensive system 



Chap. xix. COMPETITION AND COOPERATION. 321 

of substitutes grow up in the shape of athletic games 
and competitive tests of personal physical power. We 
may safely conclude that such a widespread manifesta- 
tion reveals a deep-rooted need, — that the hunger 
for the conflict is not abandoned and superseded as 
men grow civilized, but that it persists in all its prime- 
val intensity, simply assuming civilized forms. 

The serious business of life in this age of the world 
is industry, and not war, despite some disturbing re- 
actionary symptoms ; and peaceful activities now 
employ a large part of the energy that once was de- 
voted to deadly conflict. But if human nature be 
still in essence the same, — and it certainly changes 
very slowly, if at all, — it will still demand the same 
underlying realities in the new conditions that were 
undoubtedly, despite the attendant horrors, found in 
the old. The chief of these in the warlike state, and 
one which, we think, must ever be chief in a society 
that manifests vigorous life, is the testing in strenuous 
conflict of men's power for leadership. It is this 
function that industrial competition inherits from the 
ancient warlike competition; it is this eternal need 
that must justify the retention of endless strife in an 
age that prays for the thousand years of peace. 

For it were surely a poor augury for the fate of 
modern civilization that its tests for leadership had be- 
come easy and unexacting. This would seem to indi- 
cate a popular belief that we have safely passed 
through the wilderness and are now entered into the 
land of milk and honey, easy-chairs and Pullman-cars. 
If this be true, — - if our future progress is to be 
through a flower-strewn plain, to the music of laughter 
and pleasant voices, — then perhaps easy-chair leader- 



322 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book IV. 

ship may suffice us. But if our onward path leads 
upward to the heights over daunting precipices and 
spectral glaciers, we need, we must have, men. In 
that case we must increase rather than relax the rigor 
of the requirements in our training-school for leader- 
ship. 

It may be urged that free competition in the past 
has not been infallible in developing leadership of real 
nobility and power. It assuredly has not; but it has 
been reasonably fruitful of such men, even though the 
dishonest and the mountebanks have occasionally been 
able to foist themselves into high positions. Nor has 
our competition hitherto been really free; hunger and 
destitution have ever been held as penalties over the 
heads of the poor who dared aspire to freedom. But 
with every member of our industrial forces really 
free, and only to be ruled as freemen are, and with 
the serious strength of our industrial organization 
directed to increasing our command over Nature, the 
natural tests of leadership would greatly increase in 
rigor. Under such circumstances, we fancy that the 
false coin would cease to pass current, — that with 
very rare exceptions only those men would obtain and 
hold high positions of command who possessed elemen- 
tal power and incorruptible honor and honesty. 

The modern spirit of condemnation for the fruits 
of competition does not include in any noteworthy de- 
gree the larger manifestations of its power. The stern 
strife for leadership among the giants of our commer- 
cial world does not call forth the contempt and dis- 
gust of the spectators. It is a strife of the creative, 
not of the destructive forces; it is, not the negation 
but the culmination of cooperation. The true type 



Chap. xix. COMPETITION AND COOPERATION. 323 

of cooperation is not flat equality, but ample diversity ; 
its true illustration is not the even advance of a drilled 
rank of soldiers, but rather the mutual relations of 
command and obedience, the graded status of higher 
and lower, which weld soldiers and officers into an 
efficient army. The distribution of the forces of in- 
dustry into their proper relations and positions in the 
industrial army is a true measure of cooperation; and 
the process of vigorous strife for the upper positions by 
which this is accomplished is essentially a manifesta- 
tion of cooperative force, however much its apparent 
harshness may shock weak nerves. But it is not 
really harsh and malignant, nor does it sow the seeds 
for society's fatal discords. On the contrary, under 
normal circumstances nothing is more likely to engen- 
der mutual self-respect and a strong fraternal feeling. 
The weakness of competition is not to be sought 
here. There is nothing shameful in a manly con- 
test, nothing degrading in measuring one's power 
against a worthy adversary; the success of a generous 
victor is not a license to cruelty. The sickening as- 
pect of our competitive system is the battle between 
our strong men on the one side, and the weaklings, 
children and defectives of the Inferno on the other. 
This is where strife issues in measureless contempt on 
the part of the conquerors, and in either spiritless 
grovelling or intense hatred on the part of the con- 
quered: — all of which sentiments are among the dis- 
ruptive forces of society. This is where the contest 
takes shapes of cruelty which are forbidden by the 
tender mercy of the prize-fighter's code, and which in 
warfare are looked upon as primeval barbarity. It is 
the sacking and burning of a captured city; the cold- 



324 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book IV. 

blooded murder of defenceless women and children; 
the pitiless denial of quarter to a prostrate foe; the 
wreaking of vengeance upon innocent children, rela- 
tives and dependents. Xo horrible cruelty of the 
brutish ages can be named that has not its prototype, 
somewhat refined but often made more exquisite in 
its torture, in this chamber of horrors of our most 
Christian civilization. 

The hour has struck for this neo-paganism. ISTo 
one who attends to the signs of the times can doubt 
that there is a steadily-growing sentiment whose rising- 
waves will before many years dash angrily over and 
create havoc among the structures founded on these 
abuses. The socialists assume that this gathering 
tidal wave will, when it comes, sweep from the face 
of the earth every vestige of the institution of compe- 
tition, and leave their equalized social order in pos- 
session. It is certainly hard to predict what may hap- 
pen in that day: a revolutionary public sentiment is 
not always possessed of nice discrimination. But all 
precedents will be overreached and all the canons of 
lasting reform violated if the foundations of society 
are razed in the hope of curing a defect in the super- 
structure. 

To us it seems as clear as daylight that there are 
two main faults of the institution of competition as it 
now operates, both plainly removable. In the first 
place no one should be hurried to the conflict unpre- 
pared. The central arena of competition where the 
giants battle is a stern trial of strength for any man; 
and the weak, sick, defective and faint-hearted have 
no business there. But in these modern days anv 
man is defective without preparation ; and competi- 



Chap. xix. COMPETITION AND COOPERATION. 325 

tion can never be universally fair until society, out of 
the inherited funds in its hands, makes universal pro- 
vision for a competent preparation. In the second 
place we should have no " fights to a finish " on the 
pugilistic or gladiatorial model. When a man had his 
adversary prostrate the voice of society should always 
counsel, and enforce if necessary, a wise mercy. It 
should not be permitted to the victors to thrust a man 
to the very depths of the Inferno, — the living death 
of pauperism, — and relentlessly keep him there, and 
to visit the same punishment on his children and de- 
scendants for an indefinite series of generations. The 
beaten should be permitted to withdraw from the con- 
flict with economic life and a moderated hope, and to 
join the reserves of the industrial army who still kept 
up cheer and progress in a modest way, though no 
longer aspiring to the thick of the conflict. Of 
course the unfailing income from the People's Prop- 
erty in Ideas would make this possible for all. 

With the enforcement of this tribute from our com- 
mon brutishness to our common humanity, competi- 
tion would no longer harbor survivals of elemental 
ferocity. We should have the kernel of that regen- 
erated order for which the socialists long, but should 
have obtained it without sacrificing the triumphant 
power which has borne society thus far on its upward 
path. We could face the future not only with a clear 
conscience, but with power. 



CHAPTER XX. 

CRISES OVERPRODUCTION THE UNEMPLOYED. 

There is a considerable body of economic writers 
and a large class of respectable citizens who scout the 
existence of the Beast, and are not in the least inter- 
ested in tracking him. For these the riddles of the 
science of wealth largely centre around the mysterious 
phenomena known as Crises or Panics, and this sub- 
ject becomes a sort of touchstone of the value of econ- 
omic theories. We may in fact call it the Beast of 
the prosperous classes; for even those who cannot see 
anything except sloth and improvidence in the peren- 
nial distress of the poor, are yet constrained to admit 
that these periodical crises do strike severe blows even 
at their own revered persons, — blows which cannot be 
explained by the simple Merit theory; — and that 
therefore the same influences may possibly work some 
injustice to the very poor as well. 

A crisis is simply a sudden check to business activ- 
ity. The wheels of the normal productive and com- 
mercial activities are revolving merrily, when some 
influence partially arrests their motion. Usually its 
open manifestations of the first magnitude can be 
traced to some one important occurrence; as the fail- 
ure of the Jay Cooke banking house in 1873, or that 
of Baring in 1890. But the rapidity with which the 
initial disturbance propagates further trouble, and the 
profound effect of the sum of these disturbances upon 
the economic world, seem to call for a further explana- 

326 



Chap. xx. CRISES.— OVERPRODUCTION. 327 

tion than tracing the series to its apparent beginning. 
It has been felt by almost all observers who have in- 
vestigated crises that their real explanation lies deep 
in the constitution and functional activities of our 
modern world; and that to reach a complete under- 
standing of them we shall have to solve some of the 
riddles that have hitherto defied our questionings. 

Two secondary heads of economic discussion belong 
under this subject. One of these is Overproduction, 
usually largely blamed in the popular discussion of the 
subject as an originating cause of crises, and at any 
rate a seemingly inevitable concomitant. When the de- 
mand slackens for manufactured articles, production, 
because of the vast momentum involved in its opera- 
tions, is almost certain to be slow in responding to 
the check. The mills therefore keep on running until 
the market is utterly swamped with surplus goods, and 
then shut down by actual compulsion of circumstances. 
This throws a vast body of labor out of employment to 
figure as the problem of The Unemployed; and these 
men, being left without dependable resources, cut 
down their living expenses to bare necessaries, and 
sometimes below. This still further reduces the de- 
mand for goods, makes the overproduction worse, and 
completes the vicious circle of mischief. Every move- 
ment of the actors in this tragedy of fate to defend 
themselves seems to make the general situation worse, 
and ultimately to react upon their own heads. The 
medicine taken but develops the disease. 

jNTo more difficult problem in analysis could well be 
proposed than the tracing of these complex phenomena 
to their sources. For the sources are hidden, not as 
a gold coin in a pile of rubbish, but as a certain group 



328 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book IV. 

of men may be hidden in a crowd, — they are openly 
manifest, but indistinguishable. Almost every activ- 
ity of our social forces is intimately connected with 
crises either as a cause or a result, or as both; and it is 
often impossible to decide which is the actual relation. 
Thus the difficulty which economists as a class have 
experienced in pursuing this analysis is, not a scarcity, 
but a plethora, of fair-seeming causes; and almost 
every imaginable influence, from the use of machinery 
to periodic sun-spots, has been brought into the field 
by some writer or other to serve as the explanation of 
panics. 

When we come to a serious consideration of the 
various theories propounded, however, we may at once 
dismiss many of them as philosophically insufficient. 
Thus the universal scapegoat and bete-noire, Overpro- 
duction, while undoubtedly in a certain narrow sense 
a cause of panics, cannot be admitted as a true econ- 
omic explanation of them. For general overproduc- 
tion is impossible; men always have a plentiful crop 
of unsatisfied wants, and while this is the case over- 
production can only be a special overproduction. It 
is a relatively excessive production of some article or 
articles, coupled with relatively deficient production of 
some other article or articles. But this maladjust- 
ment plainly needs explanation as badly as the panics 
themselves; and so we must direct our inquiry to dis- 
covering why production is liable to run to excess in 
special lines and correlative deficiency in others. 

A rather elaborate essay in special pleading with a 
marked tendency to befog this almost axiomatic truth 
is contained in the late Mr. Edward Bellamy's 
recently-published " Equality," and the consideration 



Chap. xx. CRISES.— OVERPRODUCTION. 329 

of its elusive subtleties may serve as a road to lead us 
into the heart of the subject. The special pleading- 
involved is distributed throughout the volume and 
stated at large in the chapter on " The Economic Sui- 
cide of the Profit System," but the whole is epitomized 
in the " Parable of the Water Tank." It is an acute 
attempt to put the Overproduction bete-noire into the 
shape of a theory which will stand examination and 
which shall place all the responsibility on the capital- 
ists. The desired mystification of the reader is greatly 
helped by the form into which the exposition is cast, — 
that of a parable in imitation of scriptural models. 

The Water Tank was a reservoir in a dry land, con- 
trolled by capitalists, who paid the people for gather- 
ing water to add to its store. The people were charged 
two pennies for every bucket they drew from the tank 
for their own consumption, but only received a penny 
for each bucket they contributed to the tank. The 
natural result was that the tank was soon full to over- 
flowing, for the people could only pay for, and hence 
could consume only, half the water they gathered; 
while " the capitalists were few and could drink no 
more than the others." Of course when the tank 
overflowed, the capitalists ceased paying for the gath- 
ering of water. Thenceforth the people had no 
pennies to pay for water, and hence could consume 
none; and the only way for the capitalists to empty 
the tank and start the wheels of industry again was 
to use the water in luxury and to waste it. 

The inference insinuated here, and frankly stated 
elsewhere in the book, is that the gross product of in- 
dustry is greater than the gross remuneration of 
industry, and as the gross consumption is limited by 



330 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book IV. 

the gross remuneration, it follows that production 
must always be in excess of the utmost possibilities 
of consumption. This leads us to the lame and im- 
potent conclusion that the capitalists are left with, 
not the money profits, but the net profits of industry 
" in kind " on their hasids, and no market for it; for 
" they could drink no more than the others." Yet 
after a pause, evidently for dramatic purposes, they 
do in some way consume the surplus stock on hand, 
consumption is thus equalized with production, the 
wheels of industry start again, and everything is 
lovely until — the same round is gone over again. 

Now it is not in the least difficult to see why Mr. 
Bellamy made his capitalists refrain from consuming 
their water in luxury until the tank was full, the peo- 
ple out of employment, and a crisis created for our 
instruction. Had they done otherwise, — had they 
wasted the water at all times and seasons as their pro- 
totypes in actual life do, — we should have had no 
Parable of the Water Tank, and a bright jewel would 
have been lost from literature. Tor this is the sole 
contribution of this parable to the very plentiful fog- 
that hangs around this question, — consumption is 
made unequal to production by leaving out the 
capitalists' consumption. After the inequality is tri- 
umphantly demonstrated the wires are pulled, the 
capitalists' consumption is allowed to join the main 
body quietly and unobtrusively, equality is restored 
between the two sides of the equation, and the actors 
are whisked off the stage amid shouts of Q. E. D. 

In spite of some rather violent suppositions which 
Mr. Bellamy has made in order to fit his parable for 
proving that white is black, it will answer our pur- 



Chap. xx. CRISES.— OVERPRODUCTION. 331 

poses about as well as any other illustration. At- 
tentively considered it will serve to show the sound- 
ness of the thesis which we propound as the gateway 
to these problems. This thesis is: Production and 
poiver of consumption are necessarily precisely equal. 
This is a truth which is entirely ignored by many 
popular solutions of the problems of panics, to the 
entire destruction of any value in their conclusions. 

To justify this assertion it is necessary to make one 
decided modification of the ordinary meaning of the 
term " production." What we usually mean by it is 
simply the bare manufacture of commodities; we 
speak of the process of exchange by which they finally 
reach the consumer, as commerce, or trade. But here 
we are seeking to divide all the activities of society 
into these two equal and reciprocal categories of pro- 
duction and consumption, which under normal cir- 
cumstances balance and cancel each other. AVe can- 
not have an equation of three sides. Constrained 
thus to consider every commercial activity as belong- 
ing definitely to the one side or the other, we find it 
necessary to class all the distributive processes as pro- 
duction. Every process which normally adds to the 
salable value of an article comes under this head; the 
handling of the jobber, the common carrier and the 
retailer are all in this sense production. But this sort 
of production never stops until an article is sold to the 
ultimate consumer; and the price of the article here 
measures the total service embodied in it. Therefore 
the total measure of society's production is the last 
retail price put upon all the articles and services which 
constitute society's consumption. 

But this aggregate of retail prices which consti- 



332 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book IV. 

tutes society's total production constitutes also its 
aggregate income. Every penny of the retail price 
of every article sold for consumption could be, were 
we omniscient, traced to somebody's pocket as income. 
So much for the retailer's profit, so much for trans- 
portation, so much to the jobber, so much to the work 
man, superintendent, manager, shareholder, so much 
for interest, for rent, for depreciation of machinery; 
— the analysis grows endlessly involved as we proceed, 
but one thing is clear, — every iota of the final retail 
value has come to somebody who can spend it. The 
sum of these infinitely subdivided shares is society's 
gross income, and it is composed of the same items, 
and is hence exactly equal to, the sum of society's pro- 
duction. 

Now to assert that the workmen's share of the gross 
amount of production is not equal to the gross amount 
of production is puerile. The part is not usually 
equal to the whole. But the workmen's shares, and 
the managers' and capitalists' shares, and all and 
singular the other shares belonging to members of 
the productive forces are exactly equal to the gross 
amount of production, and hence the productive forces 
(including of course the capitalists) are exactly able 
to consume their entire output. To recur to Mr. 
Bellamy's parable, it can easily be seen that for every 
bucket of water that went into the tank, a power of 
consuming one bucket of water accrued, one-half to 
the laborer, one-half to the capitalists. If each pos- 
sessor of the ability to consume were to consume regu- 
larly his water, instead of the capitalists being moved 
to consume spasmodically at the whim of Mr. Bellamy, 
we should have production and consumption exactly 



Chap. xx. CRISES.— OVERPRODUCTION. 333 

balanced, the wheels of industry would revolve stead- 
ily, and however much we might commiserate the un- 
fortunate people under such a regime we should have 
in this parable no luminous exposition of the phil- 
osophy of panics. 

We shall hardly need to point out that the supposi- 
tion which we have applied to Mr. Bellamy's parable 
is a faithful copy of the actual situation in the real 
world. The capitalists, the landlords, the rich and 
well-to-do in general do consume with great freedom, 
and pretty steadily. In fact the heartlessness with 
which the very rich maintain undiminished sacrifices 
of seed-grain in the temple of Display, even while the 
acute distress caused among the poor by a crisis is 
most prevalent, has elicited much harsh comment from 
their critics, — and very justly. We shall not, after 
what we have said in the early part of this book, be 
suspected of unduly favoring the rich. But to give 
our gilded paupers their due, they do possess the 
precious virtue which Mr. Bellamy seems inclined to 
deny them, — they do consume. ISTo defect of which 
they are guilty in this respect can be charged with 
being the cause of industrial crises. 

But granting that all complete production does issue 
in income, that society as a whole has an income exact- 
ly equal to its production as a whole, and hence could if 
it saw fit consume its whole production, — granting all 
this let us next ask, Does society spend its full in- 
come? Does it precisely consume its total produc- 
tion so that no accumulation of unconsumed goods is 
left on hand, threatening a plethora like that of the 
Water Tank with its tendency to block the wheels of 
industry? 



334 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book IV. 

The Parable of the Water Tank will still serve our 
purpose, but not without a few additions. Simplicity 
is a virtue in such an illustration so long as all the ele- 
ments concerned with the problem under examination 
are included. But as Mr. Bellamy's suppositions make 
all the money come from the capitalists, they can 
evidently never get more back than they have paid out 
as wages, and hence can never increase their stock of 
money. We shall therefore have to suppose, first, 
that the capitalists have some other need of spending 
money than to replenish their water-tank, or that the 
people have some other source from which to get 
money than the capitalists; and this being the case the 
capitalists can evidently sell their surplus water and 
have instead a surplus amount of money. It is per- 
haps unnecessary to remark that this is the shape the 
problem usually takes in the actual world of business. 

But in our parable this surplus money is not needed 
to conduct the business of gathering and storing water. 
All necessary facilities and capital for this are already 
engaged in its transaction. What, therefore, can be 
done with this new surplus ? 

Within the strict limitations of the parable, appar- 
ently nothing. But here again the parable becomes 
insufficient; we must make an addition to it if we wish 
it to represent the actual world of business. In prac- 
tice, business operations and living expenses are not 
strictly confined to the traditional limits. If the capi- 
talists belonged to the real world they could use their 
surplus money in a dozen different ways. They 
could, for instance, construct machinery to do the 
work of one thousand men in gathering water, and 
these thousand men, whose work was not needed, they 



Chap. xx. CRISES.-OVERPRODUCTION. 335 

could dress up as lackeys. Or they could employ five 
hundred of the more skilful at double wages to build 
a fine marble fountain, while the remainder were left 
unemployed. In short, they could — and would — 
expand either their business operations or their per- 
sonal expenditures, or both. 

But here we may profitably leave the cramping 
bounds of this parable, apparently constructed not to 
elucidate but to obscure the truth, and get back to the 
more perplexing but also more real world. Evidently 
the problem of the use of surplus money comes up for 
settlement wherever and whenever anyone consumes 
in living less than his share of society's production. 
It is not only the rich and the prosperous who do this ;. 
every workman who has a savings-bank account par- 
ticipates in this problem. Society does not by any 
means consume all its income in the costs of living; 
large numbers of its members are constantly setting 
aside large portions of their income with the distinct 
purpose of not consuming it. 

But does not this constant and effective effort to 
save part of one's income interfere with our equation 
of production and consumption ? Does not the money 
so saved tend to make unnecessary a part of the pro- 
duction of the succeeding year, thus throwing many 
workers out of employment? How can the forces 
of production produce to their full capacity if the 
forces of consumption will not correspondingly con- 
sume? And is it not evident that if a man wish to 
save his money instead of spending it he will not pay 
it to the producers; and that therefore, lacking de- 
mand, the producers will not produce, but will remain 
idle? 



336 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book IV. 

This is undoubtedly in a general way the process 
of reasoning underlying much of the popular discus- 
sion on this subject, and it is not unknown in sup- 
posedly scientific economic literature. Looked at in 
this way the extravagance of the rich is a social bene- 
fit, for, being consumption, it tends to make necessary 
further production; while if the rich be penurious 
and save their money they are believed to diminish 
consumption and throw the forces of production out 
of employn ent. But all this train of ideas goes wide 
of the mark. As a matter of fact, if a man wish to 
save his money, and have its value always at his com- 
mand, he of necessity straightway spends it, — in 
productive consumption. He hires the forces of pro- 
duction to make for him something, not for his per- 
sonal use, but for producing more wealth; and as 
this machine or other article in being worn out pro- 
duces new value the investment in it is evidently 
permanently fruitful. 

Now this is perfectly true of all money saved for 
permanent investment, — it is all immediately, or 
very soon, spent. But the circumstances surrounding 
the actions of saving and investing are so confusing to 
those who do not consider carefully their true inward- 
ness that an exactly contrary impression prevails. 
The spending we have spoken of is usually conducted, 
not by the owner of the money himself, but by his 
agents, often at several removes from him. A man 
who deposits money in bank, or invests it on mort- 
gage security, or buys municipal bonds, thinks of 
himself as having placed it where it is sacredly pro- 
tected from the possibility of being spent. But what 
he has really done is to place it where it is imperative 



Chap. sx. CRISES.— OVERPRODUCTION. 337 

that it shall be at once used productively. Thus all 
money that we speak of as being saved or invested 
really is hurried off to productive employment with 
all the haste consistent with caution. The rich man 
spends money on some absurd sacrifice in the temple 
of Display, and the unthinking applaud his open- 
handedness, and dilate on the number of poor men to 
whom he has given employment. If he deposit it in 
bank, however, it is just as quickly at work employing 
labor, while in this latter case it probably goes to 
increasing the permanent wealth of the community 
instead of being utterly wasted. 

But the important point to remember here is that 
saving money does not destroy our equation of pro- 
duction and consumption. The money we call saved 
is devoted to consumption just as truly as that 
spent for living expenses, — it employs just as much 
labor, and has fully as strong a tendency to keep the 
wheels of industry in motion. The consumption and 
the non-consumption of the capitalists and of all other 
people, their saving and their waste, are alike devoid 
of significance in the matter of explaining the mal- 
adjustment of production and consumption which 
makes crises. We must look further for our explana- 
tion. 

So far as we can see it is useless to search through 
the normal and ordinary processes of business for the 
cause of panics. The ordinary processes of business 
tend in precisely the opposite direction, — to adjust 
consumption and production to each other, and make 
the wheels of industry move smoothly. Complete 
production confers power of consumption, and if this 
power of consumption be utilized it makes necessary 



338 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book IV. 

further production. It is also evident that power of 
consumption tends irresistibly to be utilized, either 
for personal expenditure, or by what we call saving, 
which is in its essence merely expenditure for wealth- 
producing or wealth-saving apparatus. If not utilized 
in one or the other of these ways it is simply wasted, 
and manifestly no owner of wealth wishes to waste it. 
But if it be utilized in either of these ways, it seems 
to complete the round of society's activities, to pro- 
vide regular movement for the wheels of production, 
and to leave no room for the mal-adjustment which 
causes panics. 

The explanation, we think, is simply this: Money 
saved from a man's power of consumption is expended 
as we have explained, — invariably but not regularly. 
It tends to enter the sphere of what we call the finan- 
cial interests, which include, broadly speaking, all 
accumulated capital. All these funds are subjected to 
influences which tend now to retard and now to accel- 
erate their passage to and their return from the forces 
of industry. It is these fluctuations, we believe, — and 
here we speak with great diffidence, — which constitute 
the largest factor in the causation of panics and lesser 
similar disturbances of industrial equilibrium. 

The financial interests, — the banks, bankers and 
active capitalists generally, — really discharge two 
substantially distinct functions in the social economy. 
One of these is the management of money which has 
been saved for investment, and committed to their 
care by its owners. This is a comparatively simple 
and easy process, the principal requirements being 
care and discretion. But almost invariably we find in 
more or less close connection with the foregoing a 



chap. xx. CRISES.— OVERPRODUCTION. 339 

business of a substantially different kind, — the receiv- 
ing of deposits payable instantly upon demand, and 
the consequent assumption of the task of profitably 
employing those deposits while yet maintaining a 
constant readiness to respond to a demand for their 
return. 

This is evidently a trust of a character widely dif- 
ferent from that of the first-named function. The 
task of the banker is to utilize a great collection of 
fugitive funds as a single permanent fund. The 
basis of such an attempt is simply a calculation of the 
probabilities of a complicated mass of human actions. 
Any one of his depositors may to-morrow withdraw his 
funds. Of course it follows that any number or all 
of them may do likewise. But experience shows that 
while such probabilities are incalculable in the indi- 
vidual cases, a wide average of them is likely to show 
a remarkable uniformity. It is this general average 
on which the banker counts, and, in ordinary times, 
safely counts. He assumes that only a certain reason- 
able proportion of his depositors will withdraw their 
funds on a certain day, and that another reasonable 
proportion of them will deposit new funds; the two 
processes largely balancing each other. And for nor- 
mal, quiet, prosperous times this philosophy suffices 
perfectly. 

But the possibility of unquiet times is and must be 
the daily thought of the banker. His professional 
equipment for dealing with them is, on the one hand, 
a vast machinery of commercial nerves for detecting 
their approach at a distance; and on the other, a num- 
ber of expedients for providing against their threat- 
ened consequences. The financial nerves are of tre- 



340 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book IV. 

mendous reach and of almost excessive delicacy. 
They take cognizance of any movement anywhere in 
the civilized world that seems likely to affect men's 
actions in the line of withdrawing or adding to their 
deposits. Of course the number of causes that may 
have such an influence is legion, and it is a grave ques- 
tion whether the bankers' professional function of 
apprehension is not often prematurely exercised. But 
however this may be, when their apprehension is 
excited they proceed to execute a train of precaution- 
ary measures; and the main element in these is a gath- 
ering in of the resources at their command to increase 
their power of meeting depositors' demands. These 
resources almost always consist largely of the funds 
saved for investment and which would in quiet times 
have flowed equably out from the hands of the finan- 
cial interests to the use of the industrial forces; but 
which in times of financial disturbance are diverted to 
the money market by the high prices there offered 
for the use of funds, or by the direct control over 
their disposal which is vested in the financial interests. 
Here we have manifestly the possible starting-point 
of a panic and following period of depression, — and 
this entirely apart from the speculative entanglement 
of industry. The quiet and regular stream of savings 
destined for the increase of productive industry, flow- 
ing through the hands of the bankers, is mingled with 
the stormy waters of speculative business, and shares 
its unrest and uncertainty. Thus when a financial 
storm comes, the savings of the productive forces are 
not spent as usual in new productive industries, but 
are temporarily drawn off to strengthen banking 
reserves. This destroys for a time our equation of 



Chap. xx. CRISES.-OVERPRODUCTION. 341 

production and consumption. It may be the financial 
flurry is short-lived, but it lasts long enough to start 
the chain of disaster. The workmen who would have 
received as wages the intercepted portion of these 
funds are thrown out of employment and their con- 
sumption largely ceases, which, in turn lays an inhi- 
bition upon another branch of productive industry, 
and so on ad infinitum. Once given a starting-point 
to this self-propagating malady and the problem is, 
not to see why it continues so persistently, but how in 
practice it is ever brought to an end. 

If we are right in tracing back the causation of 
panics to the constitutional over-sensitiveness of the 
financial interests, the problem divides itself into two 
branches. The first includes the question, Can the 
world's banking be satisfactorily conducted without 
subjecting its interests to such immense damage from 
unreasoning apprehension ? This we shall have to 
pass by as not properly within our present investiga- 
tion, merely remarking that there seems to be no 
necessary obstacle except, perhaps, expensiveness, to 
the adoption of a soundly-based system; and that any 
ordinary costliness would be extreme cheapness com- 
pared with the measureless cost of panics. The second 
part of the problem includes the relation of produc- 
tive industry to the financial interests. Is it necessary 
that the disturbances generated in financial circles 
shall be allowed to propagate themselves endlessly 
through industrial circles % 

So long as the funds controlled by the financial 
interests are as intimately connected as they are at 
present with general business, it is hard to see much 
chance of relief. The reserve of purchasing power 



342 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book IV. 

with which the world's business is conducted is largely 
in the hands of the financial interests. By these it is 
to a great extent loaned to the producing forces, and 
much of it on call and short-time loans that can be at 
once brought back to the possession of the financial 
interests if they consider it necessary. But without 
the use of these funds not only is much new industry 
made impossible, but enterprises already in existence 
are halted in their career. Wages cease to be paid to 
many whose sole purchasing power lies in their wages, 
and thus their power to consume ceases. No other 
adequate reserve of consuming power exists to take 
the place of that withdrawn by the financial interests; 
and for lack of some such resource to tide them over a 
period of difficulty the productive interests are forced 
to interfere with that equilibrium of society's pro- 
cesses in which the welfare of all is so intimately 
bound up. 

It may be urged that such action of the financial 
interests is simply by way of self-protection, and is 
made necessary by the hazards and fluctuations of gen- 
eral business. There is, of course, a basis for this, and 
a very sounds basis as things are now arranged. It is 
impossible to remove risk from business operations. 
Some men will lose money, and then their creditors 
will lose by them, and thus the loss may be spread 
widely. But such losses are a burden that, if averaged, 
the business world could bear with comparative ease. 
The real trouble is that in addition to these the trou- 
bles of excessive apprehension come in to vex it. All 
that is necessary to spread business apprehension is a 
thrill of the world's financial nerves, while the spread 
of business strength and confidence waits on tangible 



Chap. xx. CRISES.— OVERPRODUCTION. 343 

material results. We have no means of gathering up 
a reserve of confidence from the times of prosperity 
of the business world for the re-enforcing of the sea- 
sons of tension. Thus we may say the forces of dis- 
aster meet and overcome in detail the forces of busi- 
ness prosperity because the latter are unable to 
combine. 

What is needed, in our view, to remedy this ab- 
normal sensitiveness, is a partial pooling of the issues 
of the business world. If it could always present its 
average strength, instead of the strength of its weakest 
part, to the forces of disaster, the results would be very 
different. If the whole business world were knit 
together by some tangible community and com- 
munism of interest, it would face misfortune with a 
common motive. Taking the whole nation together, 
at any average time, of course most localities would 
be enjoying normal business conditions. Those where 
the reverse was true would make the average less 
favorable, but there is no reason why they should 
affect the others with nervous apprehension. And 
apart from the effects of mere apprehension there is 
no reason why the unfavorable symptoms of a few 
localities should affect all. On the contrary the ten- 
dency would be more and more to look, not at the 
special symptoms, but at the broad average. Con- 
sumption, production and expansion of industry,' being 
based on a wide average of results, would to a great 
extent go on regularly, undisturbed by local troubles 
or by the commotions of the financial world. 

It will be readily seen that the income from our 
People's Property would be just such an unifying, 
equalizing, averaging, strengthening force as we have 



S44 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book IV. 

shown to be so much needed as a balance-wheel to our 
unsteady industrial system. Its revenues would come 
in unfailingly so long as the industrial forces were any- 
where operating, regardless of local disturbances and 
troubles. They would take the average of the whole 
country; and their absolutely equal division would 
strengthen the weak points of our forces from the 
strength of the strong. Thus, whatever happened, all 
the people would have bread and shelter ; the accidents 
of business would not stop the consumption of the 
basal necessities. That great body of consumption 
which consists of the foundation needs of humanity 
would move at an almost uniform speed; and whatever 
disturbances there were would spend themselves on 
the upper ranges of commercial supply, — the comforts 
and luxuries. 

The strength which such a measure would lend to 
the commercial world in the incipiency of a panic can 
be easily seen. If there were a feeling of unsettlement 
abroad and a financial crash were considered immi- 
nent, a large range of industry would nevertheless 
be able to look forward to its coming with almost abso- 
lute unconcern. It would be well understood that 
whatever might happen to a few concerns, the total 
amount of the Income from the People's Property in 
Ideas would be so vast as hardly to feel the slight loss. 
If the blow fell, many workmen would doubtless be 
thrown out of employment, but they would not be 
destitute; their consumption would largely continue, 
and they would have a consciousness of reserve 
strength in starting to seek new work. The vastness of 
normal business, the comparative insignificance of the 



Chap. xx. CRISES.— OVERPRODUCTION. 345 

unhealthy manifestations, would be shown to every 
citizen by each periodical return of Income. In short, 
there would be a strong elbow-to-elbow feeling weld- 
ing society together, and it would take a remarkable 
group of disasters to stampede them with anything like 
the wild fright which our world has so often seen 
exhibited. 

The problem of the Unemployed is (so far as they 
are fit for employment) the problem of little panics. 
We are in a constant state of panic to a considerable 
extent; industry can always, by sweeping the financial 
horizon, see enough trouble ahead to act as a decided 
deterrent to the risking of capital in new enterprises. 
Thus the extension of industry is made slow and halt- 
ing even when the time is ripe; and spirits at all 
touched with timidity prefer taking their chances of 
elbowing their way into the already overcrowded 
centres of industry, to attempting frontier work in 
the extension of its field. Thus there is always, even 
in so-called good times, a quite large body of fairly 
competent workingmen who are out of employment, 
and whose competition for the places of those who are 
employed weakens the position of labor generally. 

It is probably true that at the expense of wise 
leadership and rudimentary facilities all of our unem- 
ployed, both half-competent and incompetent, could, 
even in their present condition of training, be made 
self-supporting in isolated colonies, raising enough 
agricultural products and carrying on enough simple 
handicrafts to feed, clothe and shelter themselves. 
But to relegate even the incompetent to a little In- 



346 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book IV. 

ferno of their own as outcasts from the hope of the 
race would be an injury to all as well as to the direct 
victims. The strength, hope and respectability of all 
grades of labor largely depend on the abolition of the 
submerged classes. The only real remedy for the 
disastrous exclusion of our very poor from the fruits 
of the Property in Ideas would be to execute a right- 
about-face and include them. It would be a colossal 
impertinence and outrage to set about showing them 
that, even if they are disinherited, they can still keep 
soul and body together. 

But when we come to considering the lot of labor 
anywhere near the bottom stratum of our social pyra- 
mid, it must be admitted we need the full strength of 
our new medicine. We need better workmen, moved 
by strong hope and working with adequate prepara- 
tion ; we need abler leadership, to scorn the thought of 
joining the crush around the pit, and to rejoice in the 
task of leading the advance to further comand of Na- 
ture's powers; and last and least we need a uniform 
and dependable condition of industry, — a lack of 
panics. And, as w 7 e have explained in our earlier 
chapters, our redistribution of Income would be pretty 
certain to give us the two former; and having these 
we should be able to withstand panics even if we had 
them, and hence should probably not have any. 

For, after all, the way to avoid panics is to have 
industrial forces not subject to them. Much can be 
done by wise foresight on the part of a commanding- 
officer to nerve raw recruits for battle and to avoid 
the first stirrings of unreasoning fear, — but nothing 
known to warfare could stampede the veteran army 



Chap. xs. CMSES.-OVERPRODUCTION. 347 

that marched with Sherman to the sea. We can exer- 
cise much nice critical ability in locating the exact 
cause of this or that panic, can hold high argument 
pro and con, and may be able to draw valuable lessons 
from our studies; but the only real solution of the 
problem is to have a society so firmly knit together 
into fellow-feeling and mutual self-confidence as to b^ 
incapable of mob-fright. 



CHAPTEK XXI. 

THE CONFLICT OF CAPITAL AND LABOR. 

The labor reformer we have always with us in 
these days. He never suffers the world to forget him 
for an instant. His claims are urged with a ceaseless 
and admirable persistency for which the world is most 
deeply indebted to him, and which makes him a col- 
ossal figure in the forces that make history. Xobody 
now dares to class him with the dreamers, to whose 
limbo so many reformers are relegated. His schemes 
and plans, and counter-schemes and counter-plans 
thereto, are warmly and even excitedly discussed and 
considered by large numbers of economists and men 
of affairs who would rather be dead than dally with the 
impracticable. In turning to consider the labor move- 
ment, therefore, we come at once into the thick of the 
present battle between the classes and the masses. 

The animus of the labor movement, broadly speak- 
ing, is the belief and claim that wage-earners are not 
treated fairly by the employers of labor, — that these 
latter retain an unfairly large share of the profits of 
industry for themselves, and unjustly stint the share 
of the former. Its aim is to remedy this wrong by the 
power of combination, — the employed seeking to 
force the employers, by the threat of united cessation 
of work, to raise their wages or accede to their other 
demands. 

As we have before pointed out, the labor movement 



Chap. xxi. THE CONFLICT OF CAPITAL AND LABOR. 349 

rests on the assumption that production is carried on 
by two forces, usually referred to as capital and labor, 
and that the whole product belongs to, and is to be 
parceled out between, these two. Of course if this be 
the case an increase in the share of one means the 
decrease of the share of the other, and vice versa; 
while an increase in the gross product means an in- 
crease of the shares of one or the other, or of both. 
This view of the case is not peculiar to the labor side 
of the controversy, however; it is equally accepted 
by the spokesmen for capital, and seems in fact to be 
assumed without thought or argument by all who 
essay to deal with the question. 

We can hardly claim that this statement of the 
case is untrue; in a certain limited sense it is strictly 
correct. But it is a highly befogging, misleading 
statement; its acceptance ignores so many of the car- 
dinal facts of the case that it leads into endless mazes 
of fallacy and confusion. We purpose to put forth 
as its substitute the conception adopted in an earlier 
chapter as more nearly expressing the real situation; 
and to test the soundness of this latter by applying it 
to some of the crucial problems coming under this 
division of our inquiry. 

The Consumer, then, in our view, is the captain- 
general of the captains of industry. All industry is 
to be viewed as conducted for him; the capitalists and 
managers as well as the wage-earners are but his 
workmen. He unites in himself the purchasing power 
of every member of society. Every man who has 
succeeded in turning his labor or other service of 
yesterday into terms ©f money at his command, con- 



350 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book IV. 

tributes to the power in the hands of the Consumer. 
With this promise of money the Consumer incites all 
the productive forces of society to put forth their 
utmost efforts; with this money he rewards their 
endeavors, assuming to himself the fruits thereof. 
Each cycle ends with the money (or, rather, the pur- 
chasing power) in the hands of the Consumer's work- 
men; but each and all at once turn their shares over 
to him again, for him to use as the starting-point of a 
new cycle. 

Let no one suppose that this is mere pedantry, — it 
is the self-evident truth which pedantry has so long 
obscured. It is, to be sure, almost diametrically op- 
posed to the method of economists in general in their 
attempts at analyzing the productive processes. This 
method has uniformly been to reduce transactions in 
money to transactions in commodities as the best way 
of disclosing their true inwardness. " As a man 
seeks money for the purpose of ultimately procuring 
commodities or services with it," — so say these econo- 
mists, — " evidently his real wages or profits or inter- 
est, — the real incentives which incite him to effort, — 
are these desiderata, and not the money which serves 
as an intermediary. Let us therefore ignore the 
money element for the present, and we shall thus 
have the real problem of production revealed to us, 
stripped of its confusing accessories." 

We maintain, however, that this process of reason- 
ing is not only at variance with common knowledge 
but radically wrong and confusing. Everybody 
knows it is not a desire for specific commodities or 
services that moves men to exert themselves; it is 



Chap. xxi. THE CONFLICT OF CAPITAL AND LABOR. 351 

precisely and exclusively a desire for money, — that 
is, for universal power over, or command of, particu- 
lar desiderata. This desire so far transcends in inten- 
sity the simple wish for the ownership of a particular 
commodity that it will hotly inflame the sluggish 
imagination that has long since grown cold to all 
earthly indulgences; and its appeal is so much more 
direct than the other that it will incite to strenuous 
action the mind whose desires have never even taken 
definite form. It is, in the race at present, a primary, 
not a derivative passion. It is of course susceptible of 
philosophical explanation, but it does not in the least 
arise from philosophical reflection, — it is instinctive. 
We shall go hopelessly astray in our analysis of so- 
ciety's activities if we try to comprehend this pure, 
elemental force, this hunger of the archangel in man, 
by resolving it into the commodities for which it will 
be ultimately spent. The goal of man's efforts under 
such a highly-organized civilization as ours is 
money, — universal power; and he who would explain 
them further must synthetize them into an expression 
of his guiding ideal or philosophy, — not attempt to 
resolve them into carrots, millinery and theatre- 
tickets. 

But there is another valid reason for making the 
Consumer the centre of our study of wealth-produc- 
tion. In him we have the quantitative measurement 
of society's receptive elements, and by bringing him 
close to society's creative elements we get our best 
chance to compare the two in detail and with accu- 
racy. For the great internal conflict of society for its 
prizes is fought out through the medium of these two 



352 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book IV. 

great interests, the producers and the consumers. 
They are like two great corporations contending for 
the mastery. Of course every man holds at least some 
stock in each, but this fact should not blind us to the 
equally important fact that the fighting is very real, 
and the interests of the two sides are necessarily con- 
flicting. While a man is interested in production as 
a consumer he forgets that he is also a producer; 
while acting in the character of producer that posi- 
tion alone engrosses his thoughts. The contest goes 
on ceaselessly with life-and-death earnestness, and a 
man's final interest in the result depends on the com- 
parative amount of his interests in each side. But the 
principal point for us here is to guard against the 
sophistry of those who wish to demonstrate that there 
is no conflict, — that because each man is interested 
on both sides perfect community of interest prevails, 
and the welfare of one is the welfare of all. Of course 
we all know that the producers are consumers and the 
consumers are (largely) producers, but when we ask, 
How much ? in regard to these truisms, we begin to 
get results not covered by the stock platitudes, — such 
results as those we have dealt with in our earlier 
chapters. 

Now however sound may be our contention that 
production is really managed for the benefit of the 
Consumer, it is evidently not accepted by the working- 
men. For them the employer is the captain of in- 
dustry, and divides the proceeds. They demand from 
him an increase of their scanty share, to be paid from 
his own ample rewards. Are they right in looking 
upon him as the reservoir whence their increased 
shares must be drawn if at all ? 



Chap. xxi. THE CONFLICT OF CAPITAL AND LABOR. 353 

The problem is a real and crucial one, for this gen- 
eration has repeatedly seen the demand successful. 
The organization of labor has in many instances 
made it so strong that it has been able, by the threat 
of open hostilities, to extort important concessions of 
higher wages from its employers. Does the amount 
of these higher wages come from the employers' 
pockets ? 

We think the answer is evident. The employers 
have not, in general, suffered in the least from the 
advanced wages. As soon as these wages became a 
necessary part of the expenses of production they were 
simply added to the prices of the goods produced, and 
our friend the Consumer paid them. Evidently here 
the employers were mere figure-heads for the Con- 
sumer; the cost of the victory which the workman 
apparently gained over the employers fell ultimately 
upon him alone. The conflict was only nominally a 
feud between capital and labor. 

To take the opposite aspect of the case let us look 
at the falling wages. In several of the large manufac- 
turing interests wages have decidedly fallen in the last 
few years, — the organization of labor was unequal to 
the task of maintaining the existing rates, and the 
capitalists were able to make important economies in 
the labor cost of production. Have the gains from 
these economies generally gone into the employers' 
pockets ? 

We think no one will venture to maintain the 
affirmative. As soon as it is demonstrated that, in 
such an industry, wages can be reduced, the orders of 
the Consumer to reduce them are imperative. The 
higher wages are no longer a necessary part of the 



354 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book IV. 

expenses of production, and our Consumer pays for 
nothing else. If any capitalist so far transcend Lis 
grant of authority from the Consumer as to pay more 
than necessary expenses, the excess so paid comes out 
of his own pocket. Thus the Consumer has pocketed 
the whole of the sum squeezed from the wages of 
labor. The conflict between capital and labor was 
mythical: the Consumer, ambushed behind the capi- 
talist, was labor's real enemy. And of course labor in 
this case may derive whatever consolation it can from 
the fact that it is a part of the Consumer. 

We think a following out of this line of investiga- 
tion will bring the same result everywhere. It is 
really a matter of profound indifference to employers 
what the necessary wages of labor are, — high or low, 
they ultimately fall on the Consumer. The employ- 
er's only concern is to be sure that they are necessary 
wages before he pays them; and to this end he, of 
course, puts on a bold front when organized labor 
demands higher pay, for if he be faint-hearted and 
make concessions at the first onset, while his rivals 
hold their ground, the Consumer will surcharge him 
with the unnecessary expenditure. But if the forces 
of organized labor develop real, sustained strength, 
and carry their position all along the line, this fur- 
nishes the employer with the voucher he needs of the 
necessity of his expenditure. Upon this voucher he 
can collect from the Consumer the extra sum, and pay 
it over as wages to the workingmen; and thenceforth 
for a time the relations of capital and labor are as 
affectionate as those of opposing counsel after court 
adjourns. 

Thus when we come to look into the real position of 



Chap. xxi. THE CONFLICT OF CAPITAL AND LABOR. 355 

the capitalist in these encounters we always find it to 
be merely that of business manager for the Consumer. 
He is, to be sure, conducting business in his own name 
and with all the trappings of independence. But we 
find his backer assuming his necessary losses and ap- 
propriating his possible profits. We are therefore safe 
in concluding that he is a figure-head, — that the Con- 
sumer is his responsible principal, and the real enemy 
whom the hosts of labor are so vigorously assailing. 

But we shall doubtless have one obvious weakness 
of our position in the matter pointed out to us. The 
tremendous amount of money which the capitalist 
oftentimes retains for himself out of his business ope- 
rations seems hardly to agree with our agency theory. 
He could very well, in some cases, pay higher wages 
than he does, and yet have a living income ; but organ- 
ized labor has made repeated attempts to possess 
itself of this gold, and failed. Likewise he could 
make concessions to the Consumer, and still have 
bread to eat; but the Consumer cannot extort them. 
If the capitalist be merely the agent for the Consumer, 
how can he possibly retain these vast sums over and 
above the necessary wages of labor and expenses of 
the business? 

There is but one answer possible to this question 
upon our supposition, — the capitalist's share is part of 
the necessary expenses of business, or the Consumer 
would not pay it. As we are considering the capitalist 
as the agent or employee of the Consumer we may 
consider this payment as the capitalist's wages; and so 
it really is, in any large consideration of the subject. 
Viewed in this way labor and capital are employed by 
the Consumer and are by him paid wages, — the neces- 



356 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book IV. 

sary wages: those the Consumer finds it impossible to 
avoid paying for the work he wishes done. But 
viewed in this way we must consider the wages as paid, 
not for labor in any narrow sense, but for any one or 
all of the complex and complicated services of the pro- 
ductive forces, — labor, wages of superintendence and 
management, payment for risk assumed, interest on 
capital, depreciation of machinery, rent. And the 
criterion by which the Consumer rates any part of 
these services in wages is a quality which necessarily 
belongs in varying intensity to every individual, part, 
and minor aggregate of the productive forces as their 
essential characteristic, — namely, efficiency. 

But to say without further qualification that the 
Consumer pays wages according to the efficiency of the 
labor he employs would evidently leave large excep- 
tions to be explained. Those familiar with the pro- 
cesses of production in their business aspect know that 
the exactly opposite statement would be as near the 
truth. If a manufacturing industry by reason of 
some new discovery become twice as efficient as it was 
previously, — if it turn out twice the finished product 
with the same amount of labor and general expense, — 
does the Consumer double its money reward? The 
query sounds like bitter irony: he does nothing of the 
kind. In fact, the producers are fortunate if he 
pay them as much for the doubled production as for 
the earlier output. Nevertheless, the general state- 
ment that the Consumer pays the productive forces ac- 
cording to their efficiency is perfectly sound, and the 
necessary qualifications are embodied in the form in 
which we state it as a general law of the Remunera- 
tion of Persona] Services. 



Chap. xxi. THE CONFLICT OF CAPITAL AND LABOR. 357 

Our law of the Remuneration of Personal Services 
is none other than what is known as Ricardo's law of 
Rent. The latter is in fact an universal law applying 
to the remuneration of all manner of monopoly, and as 
land is a monopoly, the law applies perfectly to the re- 
muneration obtainable by its owners. But a man's 
personal services are just as truly a monopoly in his 
ownership as is his land, and this same law, with the 
necessary changes in its terms, applies just as truly to 
the remuneration he can obtain for them. 



The law of Rent assumes that land of various grades 
of fertility is necessarily cultivated to produce the food 
needed by society. Of course the least fertile land 
must have some productivity in excess of the expense 
of cultivation, or it would not be cultivated, but it can 
only be the least appreciable amount of such excess, or 
yet poorer land would be cultivated. But evidently 
this poorest cultivated land can pay no rent, for any 
deduction from its product for this purpose would 
make its cultivation issue in a loss to the cultivator. 
On the other hand, land yielding twice as much for the 
same expense of cultivation would bear a rent equal to 
one-half of its gross product, for any cultivator could 
as well afford to pay such a rent for the better land, 
as to cultivate the poorer land free of rent. The rent 
of still better land, or that of an intermediate grade, 
wculd of course be fixed on the same principle. Here 
we reach the simplest statement of the law of Rent; 
— that it is in any given case determined by the 
amount of the net productivity of the land in ques- 
tion ? or the excess of its fertility over that of the poor- 



358 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book IV. 

est land in use, — the land which yields the bare ex- 
penses of cultivation but no rent. 

The application of this principle to our problem we 
call the law of the Remuneration of Personal Services. 
It assumes that services of various grades of efficiency 
are necessarily employed in satisfying the demands of 
society. The least efficient social servant must of 
course be paid something, or he would not work, but 
it need only be such an amount as will weigh effec- 
tively in the balance of his desires as against doing 
nothing. But all grades of service above the bottom 
stratum can effectively demand a remuneration as 
much in excess of this lower limit as their efficiency 
exceeds in money value the minimum efficiency of the 
necessarily-employed labor, for the Consumer can as 
well afford to pay the higher wages for the greater 
efficiency as to pay the minimum wages for the mini- 
mum efficiency. Thus we have the simplest statement 
of our law of the Remuneration of Personal Ser- 
vices: — that the personal remuneration in any given 
case exceeds the minimum personal remuneration by 
an amount equal to the personal excess of efficiency 
over the efficiency of the lowest grade that, for the 
satisfaction of his demands, the Consumer finds it 
necessary to employ. 

But these twin statements as yet have not proceeded 
beyond the statical aspect of the problem; — they as- 
sume a stationary condition of society. To proceed 
to the dynamic statement of the law of Rent we must 
consider the effect of changes in the amount of so- 
ciety's demand for food, or in the fertility of the soils 
from which it must be satisfied. If society's demand 
for food be increased or the general fertility of the 



Chap. xxi. THE CONFLICT OF CAPITAL AND LABOR. 3:9 

soils in question be diminished it becomes necessary, 
in order to fully satisfy this demand, to include in the 
food-producing area a lower grade of soils than had 
previously been cultivated. But to procure their cul- 
tivation it will be necessary to make what was before 
true of the least fertile soils then cultivated, now true 
of the still less fertile soils, — their produce must pay 
for their cultivation, and something over. This can 
only be done by raising the general prices of food, 
which therefore must be a necessary consequence of 
the inclusion for cultivation of a new range of inferior 
soils, or of " lowering the margin of cultivation," as 
it is called in economic literature. This, of course, 
will raise all the rents; for though land of a certain 
fertility will not be, by the process, changed in its 
productive power, its excess of fertility over that of 
the poorest land in use will be increased; and it is this 
excess which is the measure of rent. 

The contrary process, however, — " raising the mar- 
gin of cultivation," — is the one which chiefly interests 
us, because it is very plentifully exemplified in actual 
society, while the hunt for a genuine present-day in- 
stance of the other would probably be a long one. If 
society's demand for food be decreased, or the general 
fertility of the soils from which it must be satisfied 
be increased, or new soils of superior fertility be dis- 
covered, it becomes unnecessary, for the satisfaction of 
these demands, to retain in the food-producing area the 
full amount of soil that had previously been culti- 
vated. The least fertile lands accordingly cease to 
be cultivated, and the lower margin of fertility fixes 
itself at land of somewhat better grade. This land 
now in turn yields no rent, and the sole cost of its pro- 



360 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book IV. 

duct to society is the expense of cultivation. This 
expense must, of course, be less than in the case of the 
less fertile abandoned lands, hence the general prices 
of food must fall. And concurrently all rents must 
fall; for land of a given fertility is nearer the margin 
of cultivation than before. 

Turning with this same formula to the dynamic 
problems of the law of the Remuneration of Personal 
Services, we find the same principles applicable. If 
society's demand for personal services be increased, or 
the general efficiency of the productive forces be 
diminished, the margin of productivity (as we may by 
analogy call it) will be lowered, the minimum of 
efficiency necessary to secure employment will like- 
wise fall, and the productive processes will in general 
become less effective and more costly. Concurrently 
the more efficient personal services will secure higher 
remuneration, for their excess of efficiency over the 
services of lowest grade will be increased by the fall- 
ing of the grade of the latter. On the other hand if 
society's demand for services be decreased, or the gen- 
eral efficiency cf the productive forces be increased, 
the margin of productivity will be raised, and with it 
the standard of efficiency necessary to secure employ- 
ment; while the productive processes will in general 
become more effective and less costly, and the remu- 
neration of the more efficient personal services will be 
diminished. 

This theory of monopoly remuneration we believe 
to be as sound and luminous in our new application 
of it to payment for personal services as in its classical 
application to the rent of land ; but it is also as much, 



Chap. xxi. THE CONFLICT OF CAPITAL AND LABOR. 361 

or perhaps more, open to misunderstanding. It is a 
simple theory, and the fields of its application are 
crowded with the most complex and perplexing phe- 
nomena. It is therefore not to be marveled at that it 
has been doubted, contradicted and attacked, not on 
account of any fundamental error it contains, but 
because the intricacies to which it was applied ex- 
ceeded or fell short of its postulates. But those who 
have first thoroughly comprehended its limitations we 
think can hardly fail to do full justice to the clarifying 
insight which it lends to the seeker after a clue in these 
labyrinths. It is this insight that we covet in apply- 
ing it to our present problem; and it is not with the 
purpose of torturing the facts, but rather to lay bare 
the essential elements which these, by their very multi- 
plicity, tend to confuse, that we have made and now 
make certain suppositions to fit our theory to the ex- 
planation of the whole range of productive activities. 
In the first place, then, we have been speaking of 
personal services, and have outlined the theory which 
we propose to apply to their consideration. The 
term "personal services" has, however, a rather narrow 
technical meaning which is not the one we seek to 
give it : — —it is used restrictively to denote the services 
rendered in strictly personal relations, — e.g., those of 
a physician, a lawyer, a valet, a nurse. But the 
problem we are here dealing with includes all services 
of economic value, and the reason we seek to make 
them personal services is because it is only as pertain- 
ing to some individual that they take on the monopoly 
character needed to fit our theory. This involves no 
violent supposition, however. Every individual has 
a monopoly, not only in his bare actions, but in the 



362 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book IV. 

capital and other economic incidents which he joins to 
them to make his economic or productive individu- 
ality. Taken in this sense we have the total produc- 
tion of society grouped around a set of personal 
monopolies, and the consideration of the totality of 
these units of production will give us a view of all 
the transactions which our Consumer initiates. 

We must also carry a little farther the extension 
which, in a previous chapter, we have given to the 
meaning of the term " production." We there made 
it include all the distributive as well as the primary 
productive processes, ending only, in fact, where 
consumption began. We now further call attention 
to the essence of the meaning of the word as we are 
here employing it. Production is simply meeting the 
wishes of the Consumer. Anything he is willing to 
give money for, is production, in this sense. Of course 
with production so defined "efficiency" takes on some 
startling meanings. The stately bearing which pro- 
cures an easy and well-paid place for some congenital 
incompetent, is a humble instance of such efficiency. 
A much higher grade of the same commodity is exem- 
plified by the soubrette who "draws" by reason of her 
frank indelicacy. The extreme instance of such ef- 
ficiency is perhaps to be found in some of the leaders 
of finance who manage to get well paid for working 
irreparable devastation. We are not properly to be 
blamed, however, for the unsavory character of these 
instances of efficiency. They exist: the only way we 
can change them is to change the character of the Con- 
sumer, which is precisely the ultimate purpose of this 
book. But the Consumer is not made up of the de- 
mands of people who are " mostly fools," despite the 



Chap. xxi. THE CONFLICT OF CAPITAL AND LABOR. 363 

dictum of high authority, and the vast body of pro- 
duction consists in meeting the solid and useful needs 
of sober people. 

Looking now at society's productive activities in the 
light of this conception, the whole resolves itself into 
an ascending scale of individual efficiency in appre- 
hending and satisfying the real and imaginary wants 
of the Consumer. The minimum of efficiency neces- 
sary to secure employment is, we must admit, pretty 
low, — but still too high for some millions of our fel- 
lows to reach, even with their utmost exertions. But 
every step in the scale of ability above this bottom 
level means an increment of wages, and every incre- 
ment is absolutely necessary if the demands of the 
Consumer are to be supplied. Protest as he may the 
Consumer is forced to pay it; he has no effective 
alternative. He may indeed have recourse to lower 
grades of labor, but this pays him no better than the 
higher grades at higher wages. So after trying all 
possible means of escape from the tyranny of efficiency 
he finally gives in, and pays wages ranging up to tre- 
mendous sums for the upper grades of efficiency, con- 
vinced much against his inclination that each upward 
step is implacably necessary. 

The supposedly warring clans of capital and labor 
or of brain-work and handiwork are mingled in hope- 
less confusion in the sequence of this ascending scale. 
We usually, to be sure, find the top of the scale occu- 
pied by the employer and capitalist, while the bottom 
is principally taken up by the manual laborers, but 
many exceptions are to be noted. ISTow and again 
some representative of abstruse and difficult brain- 



304 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book IV. 

work is found near the bottom, while some possessor 
of purely manual skill forces his way far up the scale. 
In the middle elevations especially all sorts and de- 
scriptions of efficiency are found. Even near the top 
the capitalist employers are jostled by possessors of 
talents who receive no aid from wealth. For wealth 
merely enables a man to enter the competition for the 
leadership of production; it does not assure him any 
efficiency therein. The proving to which competi- 
tion subjects aspirants for economic leadership is no 
respecter of persons or of wealth; it is fnlly as severe 
and searching as the testing of any humbler functions, 
and unsuccessful aspirants for its honors often fall as 
low in the scale of efficiency as the humblest laborer. 
The efficiency of the employer, however, though 
just as real as the efficiency of the plainest manual 
laborer, just as rigidly measured and just as difficult of 
attainment, is yet different from such simpler efficien- 
cies in one important respect. It is purely a deriva- 
tive efficiency, — a further result superinduced upon 
an independent efficiency. Taking existing labor at 
its own level of efficiency, fixed by its separate pro- 
cess of testing, the employer so orders its processes that 
its gross efficiency is greater than the sum of the 
efficiencies of its parts. The excess is the measure of 
the employer's efficiency. It is often, to be sure, a 
minus quantity; but on the other hand it is often very 
great, and apparently disproportionate to the employ- 
er's effort, and the labor with whose aid it was pro- 
duced is often inclined to claim a share in it. But 
such a claim is foredoomed to futility; the employed 
efficiency has had no part in producing this excess, and 
can never obtain it except as a gift. 



Chap. xxi. THE CONFLICT OF CAPITAL AND LABOR. 305 

There is another form of derivative efficiency in- 
timately associated with this problem, — the efficiency 
derived from the certain economic incidents of pro- 
duction, all of which are obtainable with capital. The 
possession of capital, therefore, greatly increases the 
efficiency of competently-conducted industrial opera- 
tions. In fact this is putting it very mildly; it is im- 
possible to conduct extensive industrial operations in 
these days without a large use of capital. But capital 
by itself is absolutely helpless, inert; it is only as an 
adjunct to personal efficiency that it appears in our 
scale. On the other hand we cannot credit to the 
individual efficiency of the directing mind the tremen- 
dous increase in productiveness wrought by properly- 
directed capita], but only the excess of such produc- 
tiveness over the results of the minimum efficiency 
necessarily employed in the management of capital. 
We cannot too constantly keep in mind the fact that 
the Consumer pays, not for gross efficiency, but for its 
excess over the minimum grade of efficiency which he 
is compelled to employ. 

Our suppositions have now given us a society com- 
completely individualized in its productive activities, 
and completely unified in its interests as Consumer. 
Although in doing so we have found ourselves led far 
from the current conceptions, we have certainly done 
no violence to the actual facts. As consumers all men's 
interests are in common and substantially alike; as 
producers they are strictly individual, infinitely vari- 
ous in degree, and often conflicting. Applying these 
conceptions to our theory, let us see if we can throw 
any light on the time-honored problems centering 
around the alleged Conflict of Capital and Labor. 



86fi THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book IV. 

The typical problems of our modern industrial 
world are those involved in an increase of the general 
efficiency of the productive forces. Such an increase 
has come to be almost regular and constant in our day, 
and its important steps come with startling frequency. 
New processes and inventions for increasing this ef- 
ficiency are constantly being discovered and perfected, 
and they keep the business world in a constant state 
of turmoil trying to effect the readjustments of equili- 
brium made necessary by their operation. It is highly 
important to understand, if possible, this process. 
What is its significance? 

Evidently on our theory the primary results are 
very plain. In the first place the " margin of produc- 
tivity " will be raised, and with it the standard of 
efficiency necessary to secure employment. This 
means that old processes, old capital and old machinery 
that formerly filled a necessary place in production, 
with the labor that operated them, are now superseded 
and made useless. The Consumer has had more ef- 
ficient and cheaper processes offered to him, and he 
will no longer pay for the more costly and less efficient. 
He pays only necessary expenses. Even for the new 
and wonderful methods he pays less than he once paid 
for the old and discarded ones, because, the lower limit 
of efficiency having been raised, the excess of the new 
over the bottom stratum is less than the excess of the 
old over its bottom stratum. 

Here w 7 e have the explanation in terms of our theory 
of one of the most familiar yet most mysterious of 
our modern social phenomena, — the impoverishing ef- 
fect of increasing power of wealth-production. From 
this we can see why every great advance in man's 



/.hap. xxi. THE CONFLICT OF CAPITAL AND LABOR. 3G7 

power over JS'ature, which pours wealth with lavish 
profusion into the lap of the Consumer, only tends 
to pinch more closely the share of the productive 
forces. For every advance in the general efficiency 
of the Consumer's workmen, by diminishing the resis- 
tance which Nature offers to the production of wealth, 
renders them less necessary to him. As the higher 
grades of productive power are added by the progress 
of invention, all the lower grades fall below the neces- 
sary minimum of efficiency, and are dropped; while 
the new processes, being close together in rate of 
efficiency, and the highest being comparatively little 
in excess of the lowest, the margin of excess, which 
fixes personal remuneration, is small.* 



* It may here be objected that no tendency toward the reduc- 
tion of personal remuneration in the higher levels is actually 
exhibited, — that men make, under free competition, more money 
now than ever before. This is true; but it is a significant fact 
that the only talents and powers that enable their possessors to 
do this are those which are in a measure beyond calculation and 
foresight, and which therefore possess an element of monopoly. 
The talents of the inventor and the business pioneer are pre- 
eminently of this order; and so in a lesser degree are those of the 
men who possess rare technical skill demanded by some develop- 
ing industry. But any calling which can be reduced to rules and 
specifications; any capabilities which can be produced with 
dependable regularity by technical education; any training for 
which college courses can be provided, and a regular supply of 
candidates developed, — any or all of these classes of efficiency, 
no matter how stringent the demand they make on the human 
faculties, are assuredly subject to the law of diminishing re- 
muneration accompanying an increasing general average of 
efficiency. We might instance, as illustrating this, the develop- 
ment of the electrical industry in the past generation, with its 
high initial rewards for competent talent and its ultimate re- 
duction of these to the common level; or the overcrowded condi- 
tion of the professions generally; or the plethora of highly- 
educated men in Germany, and now in a lesser degree everywhere. 
Mere unmonopolized competency, talent, power, are becoming in- 
creasingly helpless under the demands of our rising scale of 



368 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book IV. 

We have but to turn to any daily paper to see this 
process described with much force and feeling in the 
language of ordinary business. " The volume of busi- 
ness offering is satisfactory, but rates are unremun- 
erative;" or "an era of unprecedented pressure of com- 
petition is upon us, and only the very strongest can 
live in it;" or "a whole department of business is being- 
strangled to death by the relentless cutting down of 
margins, and the pressure of manufacturers to reach 
consumers with the intervention of the fewest possible 
middlemen." All these movements are those of in- 
creasing efficiency, of eliminating the waste from the 
distributive processes, of getting the finished product 
to the consumer, — which is necessary to complete pro- 
duction, — with the greatest efficiency and cheapness, 
■ — in short, of increasing power of wealth -produc- 
tion. But on that very account they are, and are 
rightly apprehended as being, a menace to the welfare 
of the producers. People fall into the way of talking 
as if the coming era of unexampled power of wealth- 
production were to be dreaded as a fierce storm, which 
must inevitably beat to destruction every producer ex- 
posed to the stress of free competition, — from which 
the only possible refuge must be in some harbor of 
monopoly. 

And they are not far wrong. Every general effi- 
ciency which the advance of science and invention 

efficiency. All through the business and professional world it is 
becoming recognized that " the regular run of business " is sub- 
ject to a constantly-diminishing rate of remuneration; — that the 
most available resource to counteract this tendency is to develop 
specialties, novelties, the latest fashions, exclusive designs, — any- 
thing with an element of monopoly, anything to get away from 
this relentless constrictive tendency. 



Chap. xxi. THE CONFLICT OF CAPITAL AND LABOR. 309 

puts into the Land of industry is really a free gift to 
the Consumer. The immaterial wealth of the People's 
Property in Ideas works for him for nothing, and at 
every step it displaces the labor of humbler efficiencies 
which has been drawing its livelihood from its exer- 
tions. The Consumer is approaching nearer and 
nearer to the golden age when the forces of Nature, 
harnessed to his machines, shall do his bidding almost 
without the aid of puny labor. When that time comes 
the producer will have no services to offer which will 
be necessary to the Consumer, and ceasing to be a 
producer he will cease to share in the triumphs of the 
Consumer. 

But this, of course, is a fanciful sketch. We have 
but for a moment followed out the evident tendency 
of our present system to its ideal conclusion, to see 
whither it tended, without taking any account of the 
countervailing forces. The tendency is very real and 
threatening, and actual progress towards it goes on 
with tremendous strides, but we never reach the final 
catastrophe, and in the nature of things we never can. 
Let us look for a moment at the forces of opposite ten- 
dency. 

We have seen that if society's demand for personal 
services be increased, all the effects above described 
will be reversed: — the margin of productivity will be 
lowered, the minimum of efficiency necessary to secure 
employment will fall with it, while the necessary range 
of efficiency in personal services will be increased, and 
with it the remuneration of the more efficient services. 
And it is certainly true that, following any increase 
in the general efficiency of the productive processes 



370 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book IV. 

so characteristic of modern industry, we might reason- 
ably expect an increased demand for personal services. 
For man's wants are inexhaustible. The lessening of 
the cost of the articles of present use should cause an 
effective demand to spring up for other services not 
previously supplied, while at the same time the free- 
ing of labor from one kind of tasks should enable it 
to turn profitably to another. Normally this process 
should balance the other, and completely preserve the 
equilibrium. Actually it does certainly tend to coun- 
teract the other, but apparently its action is less 
prompt and ample. 

For it is noticeable that, (entirely apart from the 
difficulties introduced by panics or crises, which we 
have elsewhere considered), the power to expand con- 
sumption, resulting from economy of production, be- 
longs principally to the rich, or those unconnected 
with the productive forces; while the manifest need to 
expand consumption belongs principally to the poor, 
or those connected with the productive forces. But 
while the rich, being near the point of apparent 
satiety, have no manifest and pressing new wants at 
hand, and have, as it were, to cultivate them, the poor, 
whose wants could at once expand to fill the gap, have 
had their purchasing power lowered by being dropped 
in large numbers from the productive forces. And 
still further, it is on these crippled poor that the bur- 
den rests of fitting themselves for new tasks at a time 
when even their bread is cut off. Small wonder that 
this compensating process proceeds slowly, and that 
the reverse tendency appears to be always the tri- 
umphant one. 

Thus we may say that our modern industrial pro- 



Chap. xxi. THE CONFLICT OF CAPITAL AND LABOR. 371 

gress takes the shape of a constant struggle on the 
part of the Consumer to shake off the swarming forces 
of industry that are trying to make a living out of his 
needs, — a struggle in which he is meeting with a de- 
gree of success that must be highly gratifying to him. 
The function of the shaken-off individuals is of course 
to " think up " some new article of consumption to 
tempt the Consumer's appetite, and thus to draw from 
him by new inducements the funds he saved by dis- 
pensing with their former services. It is a hard task; 
but with heart-breaking anxiety, much dire want and 
more or less starvation it is largely accomplished ; and 
in the end most of them regain some sort of position 
in the producing ranks, and are thus enabled once 
more to taste a share of the joy belonging to the ever- 
increasing success of the Consumer. But during the 
time a member of the productive forces is unable to 
make himself necessary to the Consumer he has no 
bond whatever to connect him with the pride and joy 
and triumph of the race. Progress goes ruthlessly on 
without him and over his head, and too often tramples 
the life out of his prostrate form. 

There yet remains one necessary division of our sub- 
ject which we have not considered, and which offers 
some difficulty from our standpoint. This relates to 
the bringing of the monopolized and associated effi- 
ciencies to the tests of our measuring scale. And it 
is exactly these efficiencies that enter most largely into 
the problems of the supposed conflict of capital and 
labor. 

Our suppositions have heretofore been of purely in- 
dividual efficiencies competing for places in our scale. 



372 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book IV. 

But often men refuse to be treated individually; they 
combine their several efficiencies into a composite in- 
dustrial unit, more or less concealing their variations 
in efficiency, and will only be treated with as such an 
unit. Of course under such circumstances they must 
be considered and rated as an unit, and their individual 
efficiencies more or less averaged and coalesced into a 
sort of corporate rating of efficiency. They become 
artificial instead of natural persons. The artificial 
persons are of much greater magnitude than the 
natural persons, and the steps in the scale of efficiency 
are thus made fewer, and the distances greater. The 
ultimate tendency of these movements is to weld whole 
departments of production into artificial units so far 
as the tests of our scale of efficiency are concerned, 
with entire obliteration of any natural minimum of 
efficiency. The trades-unions are, of course, the typ- 
ical example of this sort of combination among 
" labor," and trusts and business combinations among 
" capital." 

Such combination has a manifest tendency to be- 
come a form of monopoly and thus to strengthen the 
position of the productive forces in their dealings with 
the Consumer. For evidently if the whole range of 
the productive forces could be unified into a monopoly 
as the Consumer is naturally unified, each of the two 
aspects of society would be equally necessary to the 
other, and they would deal on an equal basis. Even 
the unification of the majority of one department of 
business or labor greatly strengthens its position in 
such dealings; for since part of the combination's pro- 
ductive force is necessary to the Consumer, and it 
must be treated as an unit, of course all of its force 



Chap. xxi. THE CONFLICT OF CAPITAL AND LABOR. 373 

must be treated as necessary, and hence the minimum 
of efficiency may in this manner be considerably low- 
ered. 

The usual weakness of such combinations, however, 
is their comparative smallness. They can rarely in- 
clude enough of the efficiency in any particular line 
to make their position as necessary to the Consumer 
impregnable for any long time, and if they do not do 
this the effect of their combining is very small or very 
short-lived. They have, however, achieved the de- 
sired strength of organization often enough to demon- 
strate beyond cavil that the Consumer is abjectly at 
the mercy of any organized efficiency whose services 
he must have, and that hardly any bounds can be 
assigned to the squeezing to which that ordinarily 
triumphant individual can thus be subjected. The 
tremendous fringe of unemployed efficiency existing 
on the borders of the productive forces, however, is 
a constant menace to the stability of such combina- 
tions, for if he be squeezed too hard the Consumer 
can usually eke out an existence, with its help, for a 
time long enough to dissolve the combination to its 
original elements. 

But evidently with all the productive forces in one 
branch organized into any strong combination or vir- 
tual monopoly, the Consumer's favorite device for 
cheapening production ceases to be applicable. He 
can no longer pay by the height of efficiency above a 
minimum, for this landmark has been abolished. The 
only principle now left upon which to deal with him 
is the time-honored one of charging what the traffic 
will bear. And even in this era of his triumph the 
Consumer has repeatedly been thus humiliated. 



374 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book IV. 

Another efficiency that we may consider as in a 
sense " associated," is capital. We have already con- 
sidered its remuneration as an adjunct of individual 
efficiency, in which aspect only it properly belongs on 
our scale. But as a matter of fact the remuneration 
of capital as such, — what we call interest, — is reck- 
oned entirely apart from any individual element; it is 
a payment for the transferable efficiency. But capi- 
tal as transferable efficiency is certainly not to be con- 
sidered as individualized, for it cannot possibly be in- 
dividual; one lot of capital is the exact counterpart of 
another lot of the same size, and any difference in 
their efficiency must be credited to the individual effi- 
ciency managing them. There can therefore be no 
gradations in its efficiency, and, given a free market, 
it must all be remunerated alike. Yet nothing ap- 
proaching an organization of it into an unified interest, 
so as to be enabled to fix a monopoly price, has ever 
been even attempted, or, apparently, ever could be 
executed. What, then, determines its remuneration? 

We think the process amounts to this: Capital fixes 
its own remuneration at a point which leaves none of 
it unemployed. It simply is wasted if not used; so 
the owners of it consider this entirely out of the ques- 
tion, and lower the price for it (i.e. the interest) until 
it finds a borrower. But if this be an unusually low 
rate, its offering makes it necessary that all capital 
shall match the rate, for the new increment of capital 
is practically offered to all borrowers, and thus interest 
is if necessary lowered all around to enable all capital 
to be used. On the other hand, if at this new mini- 
mum rate capital cease to be saved, or if more borrow- 
ers appear than can be accommodated, the rate tends 



Chap. xxi. THE CONFLICT OF CAPITAL AND LABOR. 375 

to rise again until it reaches a point of equilibrium. 
This rate of interest may be considered the analogue 
of the necessary wage for labor of the minimum effi- 
ciency, for it is that remuneration which is just neces- 
sary to bring capital into the market to be used; yet it 
is also the maximum price which the Consumer has to 
pay for it. Evidently capital is more at the mercy of 
the Consumer, and is purchased at a lower proportion- 
ate rate, than any other efficiency for which he pays. 

Here we have indeed reached a conclusion which 
will make us feel lonely. The various inquirers int3 
the causes of the World's troubles are not a harmoni- 
ous body, — quite the reverse, — but on one point they 
could probably unite, — they could unanimously sup- 
port a motion that capital is largely responsible for 
these troubles. Every body of reformers unconnected 
with the House of Have has a program in which capi- 
tal figures as the arch-enemy; while the attorneys of 
the Millionaires have almost pleaded guilty by their 
faint-heartedness in its defense, — which usually con- 
sists of the question, What are you going to do about 
it? Then the attacking party has drawn into its ser- 
vice, direct or indirect, an unusual amount of theoret- 
ical ability. Probably no other branch of economics 
has been befogged with such thorough scholarship, 
painstaking accuracy and critical acumen; and that 
the haze is now in the atmospliere is evidenced by the 
current popular discussion of the problem. We are 
told that the use of capital has no tendency to increase 
" profits," and that interest is therefore a robbery of 
industry; or that " physical productivity " is promoted 
by the use of capital, but not "value productivity." 
The same general idea is expressed by Henry George 



376 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book iv. 

when he says that " if the power which exists in tools 
to increase the productiveness of labor were the cause 
of interest, then the rate of interest would increase 
with the march of invention. 1 ' 

All these contentions take on an entirely new aspect 
when considered in the light of our theory. For the 
first one we must admit that our scale has no place: 
" profits " in our view are simply wages of the em- 
ployer's efficiency, or compensation for risk, or both. 
It must also be admitted that the borrowing of capital 
has no tendency in itself to command such remunera- 
tion, which, apart from the element of chance, can 
only arise from efficiency. Plainly the advice to a 
man who, without the possession of such efficiency, 
proposes to borrow and employ capital, is, Don't. 

To turn to the second contention: "value produc- 
tivity," translated into our terminology, is simply, 
" necessary expenses of production." " Value," to the 
Consumer, is what he is forced to pay for the pro- 
duction of an article: — the measure, we may say, of 
Nature's resistance to its production. This measure 
is taken, however, not in any simple function of the 
resistance, but in the necessary remuneration of the 
efficiencies requisite to overcome it. Of course, an 
improved process of production, if not in itself a mo- 
nopoly, necessarily means a diminution in the efficien- 
cy measure of this resistance to be overcome, and con- 
sequently a diminution in this value; and the use of 
capital, in effecting such a diminution, increases 
" physical productivity " and diminishes " value pro- 
ductivity " as the two aspects of one and the same 
process. Thus we cannot truthfully claim that the use 
of capital increases "value productivity;" on the con- 



Chap. xxi. THE CONFLICT OF CAPITAL AND LABOR. 377 

trary it diminishes it. But it is nevertheless true that 
such diminished " value productivity,''' or diminished 
necessary cost to the Consumer, includes, as a neces- 
sary part, the remuneration of capital as well as that 
of bare personal efficiency; and that therefore the pay- 
ment of interest by the productive forces is justified 
by its necessary inclusion in the bill of costs which 
finally rests against the Consumer. 

The third contention quoted above as formulated 
by Henry George (though he did not endorse the popu- 
lar conclusion drawn from it) undoubtedly has wide 
popular acceptance. If we translate it into our terms, 
it denies that interest is a remuneration for efficiency, 
because the remuneration does not increase with 
the efficiency. But Henry George accepted 
Bicardo's law of Bent in its entirety, and hence 
would have been quick to see the fallacy involved 
in saying that rent cannot be a payment for the 
fertility (or utility) of land because it does not in- 
crease with increase in the fertility: — a strictly paral- 
lel statement. The acceptance of the law of Bent is 
really all that is needed to commit a man to the sup- 
port of the law of Bemuneration for Bersonal Services 
as we have stated it, with all its extensions to the 
monopolized and associated services. Those who have 
accepted and digested the law of Bent have had one 
true glimpse of the essential nature of the Consumer; 
if they think his qualities are different in the other 
departments of economics they do not yet know the 
gentleman. The simple truth of the matter, there- 
fore, is, that the Consumer pays for the use of capital 
just as he pays for the rent of land and just as he pays 
for all other efficiencies; — the least possible amount. 



378 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book IV. 

But the only reason lie pays for it at all is because it 
possesses indispensable efficiency. 

Our list of objections against capital, therefore, 
simmers down into a charge, not that it is inefficient, 
but that it is too efficient, and that its efficiency, when 
viewed as diminished " value productivity," can be 
easily understood as a blow to the productive forces. 
But the objection that it is not efficient for the pro- 
ducers, — that its use does not assist them to amass 
wealth, that the reward of its efficiency somehow slips 
through their fingers to the Consumer, — this is all too 
true; it is a typical truth of terrible portent. For it 
simply means that throughout the breadth of society 
the same truth applies; that the superhuman efforts of 
the productive forces to bring new efficiencies to their 
grim master, the Consumer, are but the more rapidly 
reducing them to slavery; that the smile he deigns to 
bestow on them in return for the gift of a new power 
is but a temporary favor, while the new power they 
have brought to him works forever against their in- 
terests. Those who dream of a future when a high 
general productive efficiency shall bring about a high 
general scale of remuneration cannot too soon awake 
to the fact that the whole tremendous power of civil- 
ization is now carrying us w r ith frightful speed in the 
exactly opposite direction. A few more decades of 
letting our tremendous productive energy work 
directly for the very rich, and directly against the 
very poor, will leave the idea of society's common wel- 
fare a bitter mockery or a forgotten dream. 

But society's grievances against capital as capital 
are purely imaginary. The results popularly attri- 
buted to it as grievances, — its apparently undue in- 



Chap. xxi. THE CONFLICT OF CAPITAL AND LABOR. 379 

fluence and excessive earning power in the field of 
production, — are really chargeable to exceptional abil- 
ity, or monopoly, or unscrupulousness. The only real 
significance of capital to the productive forces is its 
tremendous efficiency in wealth-production; and in 
this aspect, like every other power of civilization, its 
net result is to aggrandize the Consumer at the ex- 
pense of the producers. 



We think our review of the field of production has 
shown that there is no real conflict between capital and 
labor or between employers and employed, — that the 
real conflict is between the Consumer and the produc- 
ing forces, and that the supposed conflict of which we 
hear so much is simply a skirmish in the interest of 
the Consumer to discover the real strength of the ele- 
ments of production. A very cursory glance will now 
enable us to judge of the significance of the reform 
movements now operating and advocated in this field. 

Combination, we have seen, whether of the employ- 
ers or the employed, not only has immense possibili- 
ties, but has achieved great results in the way of in- 
creasing the remuneration of the industrial forces. 
But in practice it has never been able to achieve an 
union of all the forces in any one branch of produc- 
tion, and therefore its successes have been partial and 
often only temporary; for of course those elements 
outside of its circle have been, because of their 
threatened or actual competition, a source of weakness 
to its position. Under such circumstances even the 
measure of success obtained has been largely at the 
expense of the outsiders. The labor unions have had 
no tendency to raise wages in general but only of 



380 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book IV. 

select labor. For anyone who wishes to improve the 
position, not simply of selected labor but of all labor, 
the labor unions have no noteworthy promise. The 
same limitation applies to business combinations in 
the nature of " trusts," — they simply organize for the 
advantage of the stronger and to the detriment of the 
weaker firms; and, besides, their methods are obnox- 
ious to any reasonably well-developed code of business 
morals. 

The method of voluntary combination, therefore, 
offers practically no hope of achieving an universal 
improvement of the position of the industrial forces. 
But we can gather from a survey of this field thcs? 
two important facts: (1) that under certain circum- 
stances combination can raise remuneration largely 
and extensively; and (2) that success achieved by 
either capital or labor in an endeavor to accomplish 
this is not at the expense of its nominal adversary, but 
of the Consumer only. 

Besides the method of combination, which is de- 
cidedly the ruling method in the actual treatment of 
these problems, there is a very different line of action 
advocated by numerous reformers, which we may call, 
by way of distinction, the method of conciliation ; and 
which includes usually (1) some plan of enabling em- 
ployers and employed to reach a mutual understand- 
ing without taking hostile positions, such as the 
arbitration of labor differences, or profit-sharing; and 
(2) an advocacy of strictly personal methods of achiev- 
ing success, such as the exercise of superior intelli- 
gence and diligence, and the practice of economy in 
living expenses. 



Chap. xxi. THE CONFLICT OF CAPITAL AND LABOR. 3S1 

We may dismiss all these movements as being, from 
our point of view, the propaganda of the Consumer. 
They are advanced applications of his two favorite 
rules, " Rise above your fellows," and " The devil 
take the hindmost." They are all maxims for at- 
taining the greatest possible efficiency, and considered 
as such are often excellent. But to have all the pro- 
ductive forces attain the greatest possible efficiency 
is the Consumer's most fervent hope and the theme 
of his uniform advice to individual producers. His 
advice to each individual is, in fact, excellent, so long 
as the individual who acts on it is exceptional. The 
man who works hard and lives on sixteen cents a day; 
who agrees with his employers (and they with him) 
quickly; and who exercises upon his task of manual 
labor the foresight and vigor of a captain of industry, 
— such a man will rise and prosper. But if all his 
fellow-workmen do the same, not only will he not rise 
above his fellows, but they will all sink together; for 
the general efficiency of the industry being increased, 
the necessary minimum of efficiency will be raised, 
many of the workmen will be dropped from the in- 
dustrial forces, and the personal remuneration of all 
grades will be lowered. Such results are as certain 
as gravity to follow any general improvement in the 
efficiency of the productive forces so long as the In- 
ferno, with its universal threat to labor of the min- 
imum grade, is suffered to exist. 

The advice of the advocates of these methods of 
conciliation and personal diligence is doubtless con- 
ceived in uprightness and offered in all brotherly 
kindness, but it is founded on the assumption that the 
Inferno must endure forever. They see, or think 



882 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book IV. 

they see, that the devil must get many of the hind- 
most, and they thereupon advise, Don't be among the 
hindmost. Their advice has received much honor as 
being excellent in this day and generation; and so, no 
doubt, it is, — from a certain standpoint. But to those 
who accept the philosophy, now doubtless somewhat 
old-fashioned, that not only the ninety and nine but 
the one can be, must be saved, they have no help to 
offer. 

The effect of the remedy we are advocating upon 
these problems must have been so plain to the reader 
throughout this discussion that it seems unnecessary 
to enlarge upon it. Since practically all ideas of 
economic value would belong to the People's Prop- 
erty, all progress would be practically a monopoly 
held in trust for the benefit of the whole people, and 
the Consumer in dealing with a monopoly could, and 
would be made to pay its full value. All business 
would be practically joined in an universal trust to 
maintain prices. Progress would manifest itself not 
in falling prices but in constantly-increasing money 
rewards to the producing forces. There would, there- 
fore, practically be no increase in productive power 
so far as the benefit to the Consumer was concerned. 
For every such increase he would have to pay full 
rate, and therefore the cost of satisfying his needs 
would not diminish by reason of the efficiency of the 
productive forces. The profits arising from his pay- 
ments to this trust fund would of course be equally 
distributed to every person in this nation, and thus 
everyone, regardless of his position on the productive 
forces, would have some power of consumption. Un- 



Chap. xxi. THE CONFLICT OF CAPITAL AND LABOR. 383 

der these circumstances the harrowing incidents of the 
present progressive strangulation of the productive 
forces by the power of the Consumer could not pos- 
sibly exist. 

This would, of course, give an entirely new aspect 
to the problem of minimum efficiency. With a bare 
maintenance assured to it independent of any earn- 
ings, labor would become one vast union to maintain, 
not a level, but a fair remuneration. There would be no 
non-union men, for there would be no motive for their 
existence, as nobody need hunt for a position. With 
an uniform demand, steadied by the tremendous bal- 
ance-wheel of the income from the Property in Ideas, 
and a competent leadership, chosen by natural selec- 
tion from the foremost graduates of the universal com- 
petition and universal preparation for those places, 
the expansion of industry would wait, not upon the 
capitalist or the captain of industry, but upon labor, 
to make its next step possible. 

Under such a regime the Conflict of Capital and 
Labor would take its place as a forgotten tale. There 
is no real conflict now between them, but the war they 
are waging, apparently with each other, is really their 
mutual struggle with the Consumer. It is a war over 
the supposed ownership of a fund which in fact 
neither of them possesses, — the fund of profits arising 
from the Property in Ideas. This fund the Consumer 
has slyly appropriated; and with its restoration to the 
forces of industry even the memory of the old feud 
would vanish. 



CHAPTEK XXII. 

PROGRESS AND POVERTY " REVIEWED. 



When, in an earlier chapter, we spoke of the " con- 
fused murmur of voices " that responded to the query, 
" What shall we do to be saved (socially) ? " we had in 
mind, as every attentive reader must have had in 
mind, one manifest and emphatic exception. The 
book of Henry George, in fact, comes within no 
category; it can only be adequately treated by itself. 
It is the reverse of a murmur; the reverse of confused; 
the reverse of court-plaster reform. It speaks out in 
trumpet tones, with a clearness and precision unsur- 
passed, so far as we have knowledge, in economic liter- 
ature, and with an unflinching demand for deep and 
radical social surgery. It marks a new class, a new aim, 
and a new era in the literature of social science. Its 
wide and deep influence has installed its author as a 
new type of political economist, — one who, to the 
penetrating insight of the truth-seeker, united the 
passionate yearning of the philanthropist for justice 
and human brotherhood, — the true knight-errant of 
economics. Henceforth all those who seek to turn 
political economy to the service of the poor and down- 
trodden of the race, as the preeminent field of service 
to all mankind, can hardly escape being in a sense his 
disciples. 

We, on our part, have no wish to escape the ac- 
knowledgment of our discipleship. On the contrary, 
we take great pride in it. This present book is 

384 



Chap. xxn. " PROGRESS AND POVERTY " REVIEWED. 3S5 

directly founded on " Progress and Poverty," and 
accepts not only its aim but many of its con 
elusions. We have read and re-read it until we 
find ourselves constantly committing unconscious 
plagiarism of its treasures. Much of what is con- 
tained between its covers seems to us to be so sound in 
substance and so perfect in form that it may almost 
be considered as a definitive closing of the discussion. 
Yet the main conclusion we have reached is strikingly 
at variance with the one it presents; and although in 
what we have already given of our position the reasons 
for this are necessarily stated, it is perhaps but a 
decent acknowledgment of our heavy debt to Henry 
George to examine, as best we may in a limited space, 
the course of his reasoning with reference to the points 
where we have departed from it. 

" Progress and Poverty," then, is distinctly a search 
after the Beast. Its author looks upon the vast- 
growth of the productive powers of modern industry, 
and then upon the terrible misery and want which are 
unrelieved by the surrounding plenty, and upon this 
prima facie evidence arraigns society as a worker of 
manifest and crying injustice. He searches for the 
artificial barrier which isolates the want from the 
plenty, and examines the Wages Fund theory and the 
Malthusian theory of Population as the principal ex- 
planations offered by the current political economy for 
the existence of such horrors. His disproof of these 
theories we think partakes of the character of a dem- 
onstration in geometry, and leads to the conclusion 
that the mysterious evil he is seeking lies elsewhere. 
Interest is also questioned as a possible plunderer of 
labor, but is vindicated as natural and. therefore just. 



386 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book IV. 

The only one remaining of the fields into which 
political economy divides society's activities is that of 
rent, and his search for the Beast is henceforth con- 
ducted in this field. lie finds that the " increase of 
rent which goes on in progressive countries is the key 
which explains why wages and interest fail to increase 
with increase of productive power," that " the increase 
of land values is always at the expense of labor. The 
increase of productive power does not increase wages 
. . . because it does increase the value of land. Rent 
swallows up the whole gain and pauperism accompa- 
nies progress." And finally, after having traced indus- 
trial crises to the pressure upon labor and capital 
caused by the speculation inflation of land values, he 
reaches what we may consider his justification of his 
theory of the Beast in the even more extreme state- 
ment that " the reason why, in spite of the increase 
of productive power, wages tend constantly to a min- 
imum which will give but a bare living, is that, with 
increase in productive power, rent tends to even greater 
increase, thus producing a constant tendency to the 
forcing down of wages." 

With the full process of reasoning by which these 
conclusions are reached we cannot here undertake to 
deal. Henry George, in the writing of his monumen- 
tal work, has substantially rewritten political economy 
to suit his thesis, and with much genuine benefit to 
the science ; but we have done this in favor of our own 
position to the full extent of our ability and oppor- 
tunities in the preceding chapters, and cannot repeat 
the task in the critical examination of " Progress and 
Poverty." The conclusion given above, however, is 
so highly concrete and simple that it is possible to 



Chap. xxii. " PROGRESS AND POVERTY " REVIEWED. 387 

apply to it some very easy tests of statistics and reason- 
ing to try its soundness; and this we shall now proceed 
to do. 

And first let us ask, What is the amount of that 
portion of the nation's income which goes to the pay- 
ing of rent? Since it is the payments to this fund 
which absorb all the increase of society's productive 
power, evidently the magnitude of the fund itself will 
be startling. It will furnish an impressive object les- 
son in the magnitude of the fruits of the world's Won- 
der Century. 

It is not hard to answer this question with sufficient 
accuracy for our purposes. Of the nation's income 
about sixty per cent, consists of the remuneration of 
all forms of labor. Estimates of different writers vary 
considerably upon this point, but they hover around 
the statement given above, and we may safely take 
this as near the average; conservative writers usually 
give a smaller share than this to capital, radical writers 
a larger. This forty per cent, arising from capital in- 
cludes income both from real estate and from personal 
property, the real estate constituting about five-eighths 
of the whole, the personal property about three - 
eighths, — again taking a rough average of various 
guesses. It is the income from this real estate which 
is usually called " rent," and here we have found it to 
be about one-fourth of the nation's income. But it 
must be remembered that Henry George very ex- 
pressly excepts buildings and improvements from this 
definition of true economic rent. The rent of which 
he is speaking when he says that " rent swallows up 
the whole gain " of progress, is rent for the bare, un- 
improved land alone. To reach the amount of this 



388 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book IV. 

rent we shall have to make a further large deduction 
from our estimate of one-fourth of society's income as 
arising from real estate. Taking the usual run of 
income-producing real estate, it is surely a modest 
estimate to say that the improvements are worth one- 
half of its gross value. Therefore deducting one-half 
of our one-fourth we have one-eighth of society's in- 
come as the amount arising from the rent of the land 
alone, excluding the value of the improvements. 

But even this is not the sum we are seeking, but 
contains the latter. It is the excess of present rent 
over the rent of one hundred and thirty years ago that, 
it is asserted, has absorbed the whole gain of progress. 
Let us put the rent of the bare land in 1770* at one- 
fortieth of the gross income of society, — surely a very 
modest estimate, — and deducting this from our one- 
eighth of the gross income to-day, we have one-tenth 
of the latter as the sum we are seeking. The con- 
tention of " Progress and Poverty," then, reduced to 
definiteness, is that approximately one-tenth of 
society's present income is due to the modern advance 
in productive power due to the progress of invention. 

There are two main assertions made regarding this 
increase of economic rent, which we have reduced to 
the above quantity (or proportion). One is that it 
exceeds the increase in productive power in the same 
period: — ("with increase in productive power rent 
tends to even greater increase.") The other is, that it 

* Henry George's assertion that rent swallows up the whole 
increase in productive power was not made with any specific 
reference to the precise period we are here considering. It is a 
perfectly legitimate test of its accuracy, however, to apply it to 
this period, which is the typical period of large increase in pro- 
ductive power. 



Chap. xxii. " PROGRESS AND POVERTY " REVIEWED. 389 

is the absorption of this increase by rent which pro- 
duces the " constant tendency to the forcing down of 
wages/' and the problem of excessive poverty gen- 
erally. 

We may safely take the first assertion, when applied 
thus to the definite quantity we have reached, as con- 
stituting a manifest reductio ad absurdum. Any 
man who should gravely state that the progress of in- 
dustry since 1770 had added one-ninth or one-tenth to 
the world's productive power would cause more merri- 
ment than wonderment. Xor would the allowance of 
any margin of error that might reasonably be claimed 
against our computation greatly help his position. 
One-fourth or even one-half as representing this in- 
crease would still be manifestly inadequate; the power 
of industry in this period waxed, not by small frac- 
tional increments, but in some cases twenty-fold, some 
sixty-fold, some an hundred-fold. There is ample 
recognition of, and insistence upon, this fact in 
" Progress and Poverty," and we are left to infer, 
therefore, that it was by pure inadvertence that Henry 
George fell into such a manifest contradiction. Cer- 
tainly no man who, with any keen scrutiny of relative 
magnitude, looked first upon the one quantity and 
then upon the other, could possibly have taken the 
rent now paid for bare land to include the total annual 
value of the progress of the Wonder Century as em- 
bodied in our present civilization. 

But as to the second assertion the case is not quite 
so clear. While one-tenth of society's income does 
not by any means measure the increased power of in- 
dustry due to progress, it is a tremendous sum, and its 
deduction from the share of the poor would amply 



390 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book IV. 

explain their transference to the ranks of absolute des- 
titution. But not the slightest evidence is submitted 
that the taking of this sum for rent has fallen in any 
especial manner upon the poor. In fact, the pres- 
sure of rent is spoken of as being, as it evidently is, 
against capital as well as labor; and therefore even 
according to the suppositions of " Progress and Pov- 
erty," it simply impoverishes the forces of industry 
as a whole, and does not in the least explain excessive 
poverty or destitution. But despite this pressure the 
remuneration of the productive forces as a whole, — 
capital, and wages of superintendence as well as man- 
ual labor, — has, beyond a doubt, vastly increased since 
the beginning of the Wonder Century. To put for- 
ward as the cause for poverty a process which must, 
by parity of reasoning, also be credited with the crea- 
tion of enormous wealth, is manifestly insufficient. It 
does not give us the essential difference between the 
forces producing wealth and those resulting in poverty. 
But one other point should be noticed about this 
alleged pressure of rent upon production. It is neces- 
sarily an equal pressure for all producers. Rents, of 
course, vary from nothing almost to infinity, but by 
the very terms of Ricardo's law the deduction of these 
rents leaves net fertility, or (extending the idea of 
rent to cover also lands used for manufactures and 
commerce) net productivity, equal for all grades. A 
general rise in rents, therefore, will simply show itself 
in increased prices for articles of consumption, — it is 
a necessary expense for all the producing forces, and 
as such the Consumer is forced to pay it. It will, 
therefore, be a burden upon industry only in so far as 
high prices of goods burden the industrial forces. 



Chap. xxn. " PROGRESS AND POVERTY " REVIEWED. 391 

But, as is well known, the cry of the destitute in hard 
times, is, not, " Prices are high," but, " No work is to 
be had." 

A related weakness is to be noticed in the explana- 
tion given for panics. Henry George assumes, as the 
starting point of the panic-producing series of dis- 
turbances, that "production has somewhere been 
checked." " The obstacle which checks labor in ex- 
pending itself on land ... is the speculative advance 
in rent, or the value of land, which produces the same 
effects as a lockout of labor and capital by land- 
owners." Now it is certainly a fact of common 
observation, for which we should expect to receive an 
unanimous support, that production is never the first 
of the twin processes to cease its activity. If it were, 
the first symptom of a panic would be the failure of 
the supply of commodities, effective demand being 
still present. We may safely challenge any one to 
produce such an instance. The universal premoni- 
tions of a panic or period of dullness are undiminished, 
and hence redundant, production accompanying halt- 
ing consumption. But while normal demand is still 
present a failure in production of any considerable in- 
portance is simply inconceivable, and as a matter of 
history, we make bold to say, utterly unknown. 

But when we come to consider " the speculative 
advance in rent, or the value of land," as the suppo- 
sititious cause of panics, we meet one fact of cardinal 
importance. The two are not equivalent; — quite the 
contrary. A speculative advance in the price of land, 
produces, not a rise, but a fall, in rents. Where land 
is bought at a high price to hold for a still higher, the 



392 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book IV. 

anticipated increase in value is the main incentive, 
and the immediate income-producing power a second- 
ary consideration. In fact, the latter is often delib- 
erately sacrificed. 

It is a well-understood fact, for instance, that many 
of the costly office-buildings in the very centre of our 
large cities return no adequate income for the invest- 
ment they represent ; — they are simply the best 
present use that can well be made of a property which 
is really held for the sake of prospective unearned in- 
crement. Similarly, when a capitalist has bought a 
farm to hold for a few years until he can sell it off 
for building lots he is very ready to lease it to a tenant- 
farmer for a rent which is simply ludicrous if looked 
on as a return for the capital invested. Such a specu- 
lative advance in the price of land never does, or in 
the nature of things can, advance rents, which respond 
only to an actual pressure upon the land for use and 
occupancy. If this be true, all arguments drawn from 
the pressure of rent upon labor and capital on account 
of the speculative advance in land prices, must of 
course fall. 

But looking closely again at this matter we see that 
it largely, at least, disposes of the famous " unearned 
increment " doctrine. If prospective increment of 
value be paid for in the purchase price of real estate, 
it can hardly be said to be unearned, so far as the 
present purchaser is concerned. If the same have 
been true at each previous transfer, there is no un- 
earned increment to be explained.* It is difficult to 



* It must be admitted that this explanation is incomplete, for 
it presupposes value existing in land; and if no private property 
therein were acknowledged, the series by which we parallel the 



Chap. xxn. " PROGRESS AND POVERTY " REVIEWED. 393 

follow this doctrine to the beginning of our chains of 
title, for titles by conquest and similar invalid claims 
are soon encountered ; but the position is reinforced by 
a consideration, which, again, we are enabled to bor- 
row from Henry George himself. As he says in his 
chapter on Interest : " The interchangeability of 
wealth necessarily involves an average between all the 
species of wealth of any special advantage which ac- 
crues from the possession of any particular species, 
for no one would keep capital in one form when it 
could be changed into a more advantageous form." 

Here we have the insuperable difficulty of the " un- 
earned increment " doctrine. Land is at present, 
whether rightfully or not, simply a form of capital ; it 
is freely interchangeable with money and other forms 
of capital. Is land more advantageous to hold than 

returns to land-holding and the returns to other capital would 
fail for want of a possible first term to the land-holding series. 
But once grant an unearned increment accruing to land in the 
shape of salable value, however small, and it must be evident 
that, if a free market exist, the advantage of investing in land 
values will be maintained at the general level of returns to capital 
from other investments. 

The practical conclusion to be drawn from this is that much 
injustice from past ages is embodied in the present distribution 
of land, just as there is much similar injustice embodied in the 
present distribution of money. In a certain sense each is a 
" continuing injustice." But the seat of the present injustice is 
to be sought, not in the institution which preserves and increases 
equally just and unjust gains, but in the unjust gains which the 
institution has preserved. It must be evident that to involve 
both just and unjust gains in one common ruin cannot possibly 
subserve the ends of justice. If it be contended that it is im- 
possible to trace the present wealth resulting from past injustice, 
and to strike at this alone, this must be admitted; and the evi- 
dent conclusion therefrom is that general ameliorative measures 
are the only resource to-day, — that any attempt at vengeance or 
retribution will grotesquely increase rather than diminish the 
present evils. 



304 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book IV. 

money? No; for then every investor would be buy- 
ing only land. Are its " special advantages " equal- 
ized by interchangeability with money and other 
forms of capital? Are they discounted in the high 
price which it commands relatively to its income-pro- 
ducing power? Manifestly, yes; they must be, as is 
plainly evident to anyone who has ever hesitated 
between different investments for money, and as is 
asserted in the above quotation. If this be so, a sum 
of money invested at interest and a similar sum in- 
vested in land would on the average produce equal 
results, the accumulations of the greater income from 
the interest-bearing money equaling the accessions of 
" unearned " increment of value to the land. Yet if 
the money lent at interest earn its increment, the 
money invested in land must earn the advance in the 
value of the land. 

"We find then at every point, using merely tests 
within everybody's competency and knowledge, that 
Henry George's philosophy of the Beast is seriously 
defective. He assumes to show where the income 
from the vast power of the People's Property in Ideas 
has gone, but the fund to which he directs us is in- 
significant beside the Income. He essays to show us 
the cause of destitution, but the pressure to which he 
calls our attention is equally severe against the rich. 
He explains panics by reversing the manifest direc- 
tion of their movement. He explains excessive wealth 
by the " unearned increment " which yet we find must, 
by his own statement, accrue to all other forms of 
capital as fully as to that form which he reprobates 
and seeks to abolish. 

Resulting from and reflecting all these defects in 



Chap. xxii. " PROGRESS AND POVERTY " REVIEWED. 395 

his argument we find a manifest insufficiency in his 
remedy. The wrong which prompts his quest for the 
Beast is the exclusion of the very poor from the bene- 
fits of progress. The ideal remedy* he proposes for 
this wrong, however, consists, for the individual, in 
the ability to resort to the primitive methods of pro- 
duction on unoccupied land, — which is practically, of 
course, to relinquish the power of civilization. We 
need not deny any virtue in this remedy; — in fact it 
is sadly true that our modern civilization is for myriads 
of its victims far worse than barbarism. But mani- 
festly the only real remedy for the exclusion of the 
very poor from the benefits of progress is, as we have 
before said, to execute a right-about-face and include 
them, — to turn over into their possession their rightful 
share of the rich fruits from the Property in Ideas. 

But no flaws in the reasoning of Henry George's 
work as an economist can displace him from his pedes- 
tal. He contributed to the cause to which he gave his 
life the indispensable element in all reforms, — the 
moral element. Once given this, — once fire society's 
lukewarmness and cowardice with the power and pas- 

* It is not necessary here to examine critically the proposal 
to confiscate land or its rent. It has many virtues as an adminis- 
trative measure in no way connected with its manifest short- 
comings as a scheme for the abolition of extreme poverty and 
extreme wealth. Our theoretical objection to it is embodied in 
the proof that the rent of land does not contain the gains to 
society from progress. The practical objection to it, however, — 
that it strikes capriciously and at random, impoverishing not 
only the rich land-owner, but the poor widow, and sparing not 
only the poor workman, but the multi-millionaire, — is insuperable. 
It seems to us plain that Henry George is followed and re- 
vered, not because of, but despite, the manifest harshness of his 
proposed remedial measure. 



396 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book iv 

sion of a master-spirit, — and the miracles begin to 
happen. Once given the dauntless will of a real 
leader, and even his camp-followers find the way open- 
ing before them through the mountains of difficulty. 
And that such an influence has gone out from Henry 
George we think is beyond question. When the ex- 
pounders of the necessity of destitution as an economic 
force have taken their place in history beside the 
apologists of human slavery, his personality will loom 
large to posterity as an elemental force making for 
freedom and righteousness. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

THE HUNGER FOR DEAD SEA FRUIT. 

~No problems of economics are more pressing or 
more difficult than those tinctured with moral issues. 
These problems do not properly belong to the field of 
economic science, as this latter is usually defined by its 
self-appointed wardens; they are rather churlish in- 
truders that despoil its cloistered serenity. But to 
what we may call the practical art attaching to this 
science, — the art of economic reform, — these problems 
do most assuredly pertain. 'No man who proposes to 
apply economic conclusions to the benefit of society 
can long avoid them. They are inextricably en- 
tangled with all economic forces and institutions, and 
the practical questions which they present are most 
perplexing. It seems impossible for the economic 
reformer to proceed very far with his schemes for the 
amelioration of social conditions without first formu- 
lating a serviceable working philosophy of the inter- 
relations of the two fields. 

The liquor question is a typical case in point. It 
is, of course, primarily a moral question. Each indi- 
vidual should settle it for himself in his own private 
court of conscience, — and, of course, should settle it 
right. Eor just here comes the rub. So many indi- 
viduals do settle it for themselves, and settle it the 
wrong way, that tremendous and appalling fruits of 
their dereliction make their appearance in the econ- 
omic field. Grinding poverty, terrible cruelty to 



398 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Bookiv. 

children, unsteady working habits, rowdyism and law- 
breaking, pauperism, despair and suicide, — these are 
but a few of the results of intemperance that cross the 
reformer's path in his consideration of economic ques- 
tions. Without wishing in any way to trench upon 
the field of the moral reformer the economist soon 
sees that all the help he can possibly render is badly 
needed, and that, in fact, without his cooperation the 
problem is likely to wax greater rather than diminish. 

Without attempting to make a minute catalogue of 
these questions, we may take those of the liquor ques- 
tion, the social evil, and gambling, as practically con- 
stituting the field. Each of these is an immense 
absorber of time, effort and happiness, and without 
making any worthy return therefor. Each trenches 
seriously upon funds which should go to promoting 
sane and honorable activities. And finally each seems 
to seduce its victims by holding out promises of grati- 
fication or happiness which are, and in the nature of 
things must be, utterly illusory, — which turn to dust 
and ashes in their grasp. 

The prevalence of these vices in all ranks of society, 
and especially among the very poor, raises a moment- 
ous question in the path of our reform. Eor our plan 
of social regeneration consists, at its starting-point, in 
the universal provision of funds sufficient to insure to 
all the people the ability to prepare for the work of 
life, and also sufficient to keep them from absolute 
destitution when unable to work. These funds could, 
of course, easily be used for further indulgence in 
these destructive vices, and our seed-grain thus utterlv 
wasted. What guarantee can we offer that this would 
not be done? 



Chap, xxrii. THE HUNGER FOR DEAD SEA FRUIT. 399 

Manifestly we cannot here call in the aid of the 
moral reformers. We have no right to assume that 
they could or would do any more to save these new 
funds from being wasted than they have done to 
prevent the existing waste. But lacking effective 
moral help in this moral problem, where shall we turn? 
What resource is in sight to prevent the waste of our 
new seed-grain, and to insure its being applied toward 
help to self-help? 

The resource with which we essay to help in the 
solution of this problem is that of employment, — full 
and rational employment for all energies and faculties. 
And it would be hard to find a more important re- 
source for use in the warfare against evil. As Satan 
infallibly finds mischief for idle hands, thoughts and 
energies to compass, so the proper employment of 
these is in all cases a direct blow to the kingdom of 
evil. The power of a great and engrossing preoccu- 
pation in some weighty task or in some high aspira- 
tion, is like the charm of the traditional pure heart in 
its power to lead a man unscathed through the haunts 
of the forces of evil. It is this remedy of preoccupa- 
tion which is, we think, distinctively the resource of 
economic reform in the treatment of these moral prob- 
lems; and without underrating the necessary import- 
ance of legal and moral agencies, we still think that 
the hope of the future lies primarily with our plan of 
securing health by activity. 

The harm wrought by physical idleness in the labor- 
ing classes has been widely recognized. One of the 
worst forms of evil connected with " hard times " is 
the enforced leisure which it gives to the workers, and 
their consequent ability to unite and propagate their 



400 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book it. 

evil thoughts. One of the heaviest burdens which 
our millionaire paupers lay upon the community is 
the perverted thinking which flows out to the waiting 
world from their abnormal want of serious occupa- 
tion. And if, throughout our social fabric, we were 
to trace the evil which flows from idleness, we should 
have explained much of what usually passes for nat- 
ural depravity. 

Taking the wide definition of idleness it is not at 
all fanciful to say it is the root of all moral evils. For 
we may reasonably define moral evil as the attempt 
to reach certain legitimate gratifications of human 
nature by short cuts. These short cuts seem- to the 
novice, to lead direct to the desired object; but the 
essential fact about all of them is that they leave out 
the steadying influence of the effort and responsibility 
which are Nature's price for obtaining the gratifica- 
tion. Leaving these out, however, in reality the ob- 
ject sought is left out; the eagerly-desired gratification 
is not obtained, and the coveted pleasure turns to dust 
and ashes in the realization. Evidently any normal 
gratification of desire of any kind is Nature's bid for 
normal activity and service; and any attempt to evade 
the service while yet obtaining the gratification in- 
evitably results in the would-be cozener of Nature 
simply cheating himself. All Nature's rewards, we 
may say, therefore, are attached to employment, effort, 
service; the fraud which seeks to grasp the rewards 
while yet indulging idleness and renouncing respon- 
sibility draws upon its perpetrator Nature's penalty of 
futility, and figures to our common knowledge as vice. 

But why, if this be so, should these short cuts be 
perennially attempted? Is the world so young and 



ChUp. xxm. THE HUNGER FOR DEAD SEA FRUIT. 401 

verdant that no experience on these points has been 
collected? Are we to suppose that the futility of 
these alluring short cuts is decreed by a fundamental 
law of Nature, and that yet each generation as it 
comes on the stage must re-discover for itself this 
primary rule for the conduct of life? Is there no in- 
heritance from the ages here? 

Yes and no : — in very perplexing proportions. 
Each generation as it comes on the stage is pretty 
faithfully warned of the futility of the short cuts; 
but it is also rather freely advised that the normal and 
legitimate ways are blocked — for all except a favored 
few. Every man craves the sense of power, facility, 
^creation ; but our wise mentors say that these triumphs 
are only for the few; and the barred and baffled mul- 
titude are driven to solace this dumb hunger of the 
archangel within them by indulgence in the counter- 
feit exaltation of drink. Every man craves in some 
degree the possession of wealth, — the command of 
the resources of civilization; but the normal way to 
this goal is, for the ordinary man, so manifestly 
strewn with daunting obstacles, that it is not strange 
many turn in desperation to gambling, and stake their 
hopes upon prevailing against the loaded dice of fate. 
Every man is moved by an imperious instinct to seek 
the exercise of the function of generation; but the 
burdens and responsibilities connected therewith in 
Nature's plan seem, to the man without consciousness 
of developed powers, so great, that the desecration of 
this holy of holies comes to be advocated as a practical 
necessity by the supposedly wise, and, of course, is 
freely pursued as justifiable by the thoughtless. 

Much can doubtless be accomplished in all these 



402 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book IV. 

fields by replacing with sound advice the darkening^ 
of counsel from short-sighted wiseacres which now 
cloud the situation. But large progress in persuading 
men to attempt Nature's high-roads in place of the 
short cuts must largely depend upon the demonstra- 
tion that they are not barred. This demonstration is 
necessarily incomplete at present; the plain fact is 
that' the high-roads are largely barred to those not 
helped along by favoritism. It is, to be sure, true 
that, notwithstanding the barriers, the high-roads are 
only difficult, while the short cuts are impossible. 
But in attempting to demonstrate this we are con- 
tending against a deep-rooted instinct of human na- 
ture, — the instinct of justice. Minds dominated by 
this instinct refuse to believe normal and rational 
gratifications to be unattainable, and finding the high- 
road so difficult as to be practically barred to the mass 
of men, they instinctively draw the conclusion that 
the short cuts must be open thoroughfares. 

Every opening of the high-roads, therefore, — every 
provision of the means for enabling all men to develop 
their innate powers, and for withdrawing special ob- 
stacles to the multitude on the one hand, special privi- 
leges to the favored few on the other, — every such 
movement diminishes idleness, extends and intensifies 
application, multiplies sane and purposeful activities, 
and as a necessary result diminishes vice. And to 
open the high-roads does not mean to guarantee that 
any man shall be able to traverse their whole length. 
To achieve the end we seek it is not essential that all 
men shall compass the realization of their youthful 
dreams. A man may start out to be a typical cap- 
tain of industry, and after years of strenuous effort 



Chap. xxm. THE HUNGER FOR DEAD SEA FRUIT. 403 

become an employer of ten men; or he may yearn to 
thrill the world as a painter, and finally reach his level 
as a crayon-portrait artist; but such scaling down of 
ideals is not the fountain whence flows the world's 
inundation of vice. So long as a man by working 
develops genuine power of any kind, or makes genuine 
and tangible progress; and so long as he recognizes 
that those above him are honestly there by the unim- 
peachable warrant of efficiency, — so long he is re- 
ceiving evidence that the high-road, however difficult, 
is honestly open. And while this continues to be the 
case men will w T ork from the strong promptings of 
hope and aspiration, and the demon of idleness will be 
excluded from the motives of their activities. For 
hope and aspiration can do with ease what hunger and 
destitution can never accomplish, — they can employ 
in strenuous activity the whole man, both brute and 
archangel, and utterly close up and abolish the inner 
harbor of mental idleness which is the spring of vice. 
To say, therefore, that our new distribution of seed- 
grain would be wasted, and would but go to swell 
the vast sea of vice, is to say that it would bring no 
message of hope to its recipients. It is to think of 
vice as receiving the serious tribute of men's hopes, 
and as being the ideal to which they would devote 
whatever accession of power came to their hands. 
But all our experience proves the contrary. The bulk 
of men's tribute to vice is rendered unwillingly, sadly, 
as coming from dispirited captives, constrained by a 
hateful force which yet they cannot muster strength 
to overcome. In proof of this we may cite as typical 
the well-known fact that the expenditure for liquor 
and other forms of indulgence in vice often increases, 



404 THE WORKING OF THE LEAVEN. Book iv. 

instead of diminishing, in hard times, when the money 
for the purpose must naturally be harder to get. Re- 
turning prosperity, on the other hand, gives men a 
consciousness of reviving power, and inspires them to 
make more strenuous efforts to shake off the galling 
chains. And exactly similar in kind, but infinitely 
greater in degree than any slight wave of prosperity 
that now reaches the Inferno, would be our universal 
distribution of seed-grain. It would carry a strong 
impulse of hope to all whose ruin was not complete, 
would incite to glad effort, fill up the waste places of 
idle thoughts; and would thus raise relentless walls of 
circumvallation around vice's wasting stronghold. 

Thus our plan for the economic treatment of moral 
problems is simply our universal remedy for the dis- 
eases flowing from our distorted social organization: — - 
the provision of universal help to self-help, universal 
hope and universal activity. If the plan we have out- 
lined in the preceding pages would, as we believe, 
cause all men to work for nobler ends, with ampler 
powers, and from saner motives, it would also neces- 
sarily, without further devices, and by virtue of its 
own innate power, strike a tremendous blow at the 
power of the kingdom of vice. 

But here again we would disclaim any belief in an 
easy, complete and rapid triumph. The remedial 
force which we have invoked we firmly believe to be 
a conquering influence; but the forces of evil which 
create our moral problems are strong, and strongly 
intrenched, and any ground which is won from them 
must be won inch by inch. They have by long cen- 
turies of possession bred themselves into the inner 
fibre of men's lives, and multitudes of individuals are 



Chap. xxm. THE HUNGER FOR DEAD SEA FRUIT. 405 

under their domination who would certainly prove 
refractory to our treatment, and whose cases, in fact, 
cannot be traced in the least to the influences by 
which we have endeavored to explain vice. Like all 
diseases of our present social system they appear in 
two principal manifestations, — as diseases of poverty 
and diseases of riches; and our remedy is of more im- 
mediate application to the former. But it is never- 
theless a tonic remedy, making for the health of the 
whole range of society; and if it have in any degree 
the effects we assign to it, it must tend to the health 
of the top as well as the bottom of the scale. 

Here, and in the hands of its own proper physicians, 
the forces of law and of purely moral suasion, we 
must leave the remainder of the problem. 



CHAPTEK XXIV. 

CONCLUSION. FINE CLAY AND COMMON CLAY. 

The time has come to drop the curtain on our 
vision. We have followed into many ramifications 
the results which must naturally flow from the sim- 
ple and practicable reform we advocate. "We have 
seen in imagination many gladdening results stand out 
clear and plain and incontestable in the foreground 
of our picture, and many more less clear but plainly 
manifest in the middle distance; while grateful hints 
which we have not followed out to defmiteness have 
invited our eyes to rest longer on the dim background. 
But one familiar object in visions is undoubtedly 
missing here: — strain our eyes as we may they can 
catch no hint of Utopia. The land of perfection is 
not in our picture, even as a dream of the future. 

In fact it has not been part of our aim to pierce 
the veil of the future. The present sketch is 
merely a study of the probable workings of our 
existing social forces under a regime of equal op- 
portunity for all. There would seem to be lit- 
tle room for speculation here, for as we have 
often been told we are living in an era of equal 
opportunity. But those who have followed us 
through this discussion will probably admit that to 
call the opportunities of our present social system 
equal involves a large amount of unconscious humor; 
while we must for ourselves admit that even our re- 
formed society is very far from attaining equality 

406 



Chap. xxiv. FINE CLAY AND COMMON CLAY. 407 

of opportunity. But to carry forward the reform we 
have already considered until it does at least approach 
this goal is largely presupposed in what has gone be- 
fore; and we therefore, to carry our discussion to its 
logical end, assume a foresight of the future sufficient 
to show us this as a fact accomplished. 

In the beginning of our investigation we found the 
larger benefactions of the World's Charitable List to 
be a menace to society. But we also found that to 
abolish the funds of parental solicitude in order to re- 
form this abuse was then practically impossible, as it 
left all society apparently defenceless against the In- 
ferno. We proceeded with our reform, therefore, on 
other lines, and discovered a fund entirely adequate 
to the abolition of the Inferno, absolutely unfettered 
with any claims of special vested rights. We there- 
upon in imagination applied this fund to the crying 
need, thereby abolishing the Inferno and raising our 
whole range of society to the possession of the power 
of self-development. And having done this we have 
come again to the consideration of the World's Char- 
itable List, and again we find the menace of these 
huge benefactions. Has the need for their abolition 
changed ? 

It has decidedly changed; it has grown palpably 
stronger. For in a society where want and misery 
form the universal background, strong men will pro- 
tect their families against such horrors even at the 
expense of their development in self-reliance; but in a 
society where the Inferno is unknown, where food, 
clothing and shelter can be assumed, and where the 
poorest has ample opportunity for self-development, 
the men who have developed their own powers 



408 CONCLUSION. 

through strenuous effort will feel that to rob their 
children of the natural incentive to such development 
would most cruelly disinherit them. With such fc 
feeling dominating society the practice and finally tins 
power of bequest and of equivalent gift would be 
subject to progressive curtailment by public sentiment 
and law; and thus all forms of wealth by charity 
would tend to final extinction. 

We may take, therefore, as the logical result of the 
new force we have invoked and whose probable action 
we have been tracing, a society of practically absolute 
equality in the financial element of opportunity. In 
such a society a man could amass and hold wealth, but 
he could not transmit it to his children except for their 
minority. It may, and in fact must, be assumed that 
he and his wife would hold the joint result of their 
earnings and savings in joint-tenancy, and that the 
estate would continue through the life of the sur- 
vivor. But on the termination of this estate, and of 
the following estate for the minority of the children 
if any, the property would pass to the state, and would 
be used to swell the fund for per capita division to the 
whole population. The power of bequest, however, 
would of course be allowed to survive for such things 
as family heirlooms and keepsakes; and for home- 
steads, — to occupy, but not to rent or sell. The pos- 
session of such sentimental wealth could never be a 
source of harmful inequality. No man would be likely 
to leave his son a ducal palace as a homestead, since it 
would be in the nature of a drain upon income rather 
than an addition to it. On the other hand the denial 
of a gratification so manifestly tending to the dignity 
of humanity would be unspeakably brutal to the 



Chap. xxiv. FINE CLAY AND COMMON CLAY, 409 

victim and absolutely without benefit to the com- 
munity. 

This state of society we put forward as a worthy, a 
practicable and an inspiring ideal, and as embodying 
in itself the best possible results of many of the most 
promising reform movements now working in society. 
But we maintain that it is not in the least our ideal. 
It is simply the goal of manifest destiny toward which 
the development of the race is tending, and to which it 
is even now drawing near. It is the logical crown of 
that long triumphal progress of the philosophy of 
democracy, in which, though apparently at every step 
conquered and trampled under foot, it has steadily 
forced its opposer backward. It is our present society 
as our orators describe it in their exalted moments, 
when they elevate their gaze to its spiritual counte- 
nance, and forget for a time to cherish the abuses 
that bind its feet. It is the promised flower of our 
most ardent aims, hopes and aspirations, cleared of 
sophistry and inconsistencies, and finally triumphant 
over the philosophy of obstruction that has so long 
fought their progress. 

The advocacy of this state of society as a practica- 
ble ideal, the advocacy of progress towards it, or of 
any of the steps that lead up to it, is the great social 
heresy. It is as blasphemy to the forces of conserva- 
tism, and these have always opposed it relentlessly. 
In the good old days they opposed it with genuine per- 
secutions and substantial terrors; but their side has 
been sadly weakened by desertion. They now contest 
its progress with soft words and a philosophy. It is 
this current philosophy of conservatism which we 



410 CONCLUSION. 

have been continuously assaulting throughout this 
volume; and this philosophy is but a branch of that 
universal philosophy of the House of Have which has 
for time out of mind stood squarely across the path of 
civilization and progress. 

This great obstructive philosophy is made up of 
one basal principle and numerous applications. The 
basal principle assumes that God has made mankind 
of two kinds of clay, — Fine Clay and Common Clay. 
The applications are directed to showing how, in any 
given state of society, the well-being of the whole 
social body is bound up with the allowance of all 
manner of privileges to the Fine. Clay, — that civiliza- 
tion rests upon inequality, and the possession by the 
few of the prescriptive right to command the many. 

During the long unquestioned dominance of the 
House of Have a high degree of inequality came to be 
tacitly accepted as necessary and inevitable. Whoever 
questioned the righteousness of this was a pestilent 
fellow and a disturber of the peace, if not a law- 
breaker and a traitor. But for over a century now 
there has been a spirit in the air that has not only 
questioned it but has vigorously attacked it and made 
continuous headway against it. And as conservatism 
had come to stand for inequality pure and simple, the 
waxing spirit of freedom took its stand upon the op- 
posite principle; and the banner of radicalism always 
has borne and still bears the legend of Equality as its 
most cherished watchword. 

No similar period ever witnessed such monumental 
progress in breaking down the bulwarks of conserva- 
tism as has the century just closing. The thrill of 
aspiration for freedom has girdled the earth, and al- 



Chap. xxiv. FINE CLAY AND COMMON CLAY. 411 

most as widespread have been the movements to 
secure its practical fruits. The actual advance made 
toward the breaking of the chains of human bondage 
has been so great that if the century had made no 
other noteworthy contribution to humanity's riches, 
it would loom large to posterity for this alone. For 
the first time in history philanthropists and reformers 
have been counted among the great men of the earth, 
and the early martyrs of a new ideal have lived to see 
themselves canonized. 

With almost the same fervor and belief in its power 
have men worked for the coming of equality. In fact 
the two movements were hardly separated, even in 
thought, — liberty and equality were taken to be the 
two aspects of the one ideal. Yet it must be apparent 
to whomsover thinks soberly over the wonder story 
of the past hundred years that sometime during this 
period the two parted company. The cause of liberty 
and power for the common people has gone on devel- 
oping ever-increasing strength up to the pressnt time, 
with hardly a serious check to its advance; but the 
influence of the ideal of equality seems to have 
reached its zenith before the middle of the century. 
Since then its career has been a checkered one; it has 
made notable advances and has met equally notable 
checks; and to-day it rests half way between victory 
and defeat, half honored and half repudiated of men; 
and a standing riddle to him who would read the signs 
of the times. 

We read the riddle thus: There are two kinds of 
equality; — one has conquered and is still conquering; 
the other has been definitely checked, and is not likely 
to make further advances. Likewise there are two 



412 CONCLUSION. 

kinds of inequality; and their fate has been full as 
widely divergent. And to comprehend the present 
situation we shall have to inquire what are the essen- 
tial differences of these two related ideals. 

Generally speaking we may say that inequality as 
such is the ideal of conservatives. Xo fine distinc- 
tions are made; tendency to inequality is a force 
making for civilization; privileges of class, deference 
to social position, and worship to the Fine Clay are all 
good in themselves. On the other hand equality with- 
out distinction of kind is just as unqualifiedly the 
normal ideal of the radicals. Civilization is a process 
of leveling; to reduce men toward a common height 
promotes progress; the ideal social state presupposes 
and practically consists of a state of absolute equality 
for the social units. 

But with all the forces of equality ranged on one 
side and all those of inequality ranged on the other, 
the contest is of course indecisive. The right wing of 
each army is victorious, the left is forced back. And 
both sides rest on their arms. 

It is in this one important respect, we think, that 
the forces of inequality have decisively prevailed dur- 
ing this century: it has been proved beyond a perad- 
venture that there is no natural tendency to equality 
of efficiency. Under whatever conditions men work, 
great differences in capacity manifest themselves. 
But the more arduous the task, the more dazzling the 
rewards, and the more thorough the preparation, the 
greater seems to be the tendency to develop large dif- 
ferences of efficiency. 

On the other hand the very establishment of this 



Chap. xxiv. FINE CLAY AND COMMON CLAY. 413 

position in favor of the forces of inequality registers 
a victory for the forces of equality. For if the 
greatest efficiency be developed only through prepara- 
tion, we cannot possibly know beforehand whom to 
develop by preparation in order to secure efficiency; 
and hence on the average the greatest efficiency must 
be secured by the widest possible development, — 
which means equality of opportunity. 

Thus our opposing forces have, as it were, changed 
weapons with each other in the shock of battle; and 
each has triumphed with the other's sword. The forces 
of equality have triumphed by showing that their ideal 
does make for efficiency, — but only by the appearance 
of increased functional inequality. Inequality tri- 
umphs in its appearance as the necessary form of social 
efficiency; but by claiming this triumph it practically 
admits defeat for all inequality not necessary and 
functional. 

Thus we see that the Fine Clay conducts its present 
fight for the retention of its privileges from the 
vantage-ground of a successfully-defended position. 
The propaganda of equality has brought its utmost 
force to bear against this position, and has been sig- 
nally repulsed. Functional inequality persists by the 
decree of Nature ; to attack it is to attack efficiency. 

But when we come to examine the tremendous 
structure of inequality that logically rests upon this 
position we can plainly see that the foundation is 
inadequate. The main part of the inequality which 
reformers are to-day attacking is not functional 
inequality at all, — it is parasitic inequality. It is 
useless inequality desperately hanging to the skirts of 



414 CONCLUSION. 

the inequality that moves the world. And evidently 
its persistence to the present day and its hope of per- 
sisting into the future have largely rested and still 
rest upon the confusion in the minds of its enemies, 
who wish to abolish indiscriminately the whole 
structure. 

The maintenance and zealous insrease of this con 
fusion is the function of the apologists of the Million- 
aires. They are constantly proving that inequality 
is necessary, and drawing therefrom the conclusion 
that in all its details existing inequality is necessary. 
They prove the beneficence and propriety of richly 
rewarding alike the Self-Made Man for his labors, and 
his children for their idleness. They trace all the 
virtues to the irresponsible leisure of the Fine Clay, 
and all possible vices to the irresponsible leisure of the 
Common Clay. Real refinement is, according to 
them, only attainable by relieving the Fine Clay of 
the task of earning a living; but a similar relief to 
the Common Clay only cultivates grossness and pau- 
perism. Civilization would wane were the cultivated 
thoughts of the Fine Clay despoiled of their serenity 
by immersion in money-getting; but were the Com- 
mon Clay not tied to their tasks by hunger and desti- 
tution, economic chaos would come again. In short 
the only consistency traceable in these deliverances is 
the uniform assumption that the Fine Clay is superior 
to economic rules and the Common Clay sub- 
ject to them ; and from this assumption, carefully 
handled, can be drawn the law and gospel of the 
House of Have. 

Even the contortions arising from this effort to 
face both ways, however, have not been able to hide 



Chap. xxiv. FINE CLAY AND COMMON CLAY. 415 

a cardinal change of position within the past century 
on the part of the Fine Clay. They still claim the 
privileges of superiority just as vigorously as ever, 
but not so confidently. They are now resting their 
claims, not on divine right, but on value rendered. 
They plead the tremendous services of their wealth 
to society as justification for privilege. In short they 
have tacitly assented to our doctrine that the only 
valid claims of inequality in this age of the world are 
claims of functional inequality,— of efficiency. They 
allege that wealth-by-charity should survive because 
the world could not afford to dispense with its fruits 
of culture, refinement, breeding ; — that these fruits 
benefit not only the possessors but all society, and 
that to society as a whole they are richly worth their 
cost. 

This brings the discussion to a clear joinder of 
issue. We cannot refuse to admit that if this be so 
the "World's Charitable List of high privilege is justi- 
fied by its fruits. On the other hand it must be ad- 
mitted that if our society of equal opportunity could 
bring forth the same or worthier fruits without the 
sacrifices of seed-grain and blood which the main- 
tenance of the Fine Clay entails, no plea for these 
privileges can finally prevail at the bar of the court 
of last resort. 

In a society of equal opportunity such as we have 
outlined, certain problems that now vex the world 
would disappear entirely. The unearned increment 
of land, the cumulative power of large fortunes, the 
threat of aggregated family wealth, the clannishness 
of the very rich, — all these would cease to be prob- 



416 CONCLUSION. 

lems if great accumulations of wealth ceased to exist 
upon the death of the man whose power brought them 
into being. 

But would family life and the continuity of family 
traditions vanish with these accumulations ? Would 
men cease to have pride of ancestry and hope of pos 
terity % Would the rising generation leave the pa- 
rental roof when its mere physical needs had been 
supplied, and thus fail to receive from the parents 
any of the moral heritage of humanity ? 

In reply we might ask, What is the case to-day ? 
Is there now no real family life except under the 
shelter of large wealth and assured social position ? 
Can men not receive and transmit the exalted heri- 
tages of honor and aspiration without the help of 
perishable riches ? To those who admit these limita- 
tions the future of the race must indeed look dark. 
For not one man in ten to-day has any reasonable 
hope, not one in a hundred has any reasonable assur- 
ance of being able to command these conditions for 
his children. Humanity is tending toward a gulf of 
gloom; the saved will indeed be a remnant. 

But, as we all know, even to-day such limitations 
have no existence. In our Inferno, indeed, only men 
of marvelous strength can rise above their brutish 
conditions sufficiently to have and transmit to their 
children a human hope. But above this stratum we 
can find numerous instances where, in very limited 
circumstances, the noblest inheritance of the race is 
received and transmitted by each generation in turn. 
Manifestly those families which have hitherto re- 
ceived and transmitted each generation not only 
wealth but culture, power and aspiration, could con- 



Chap. xxiv. FINE CLAY AND COMMON CLAY. 417 

tinue to transmit these latter even were the wealth no 
longer transmissible. And if we admit, as we must, 
that under such circumstances the family glory would 
at once lapse upon the failure of the family nobility, 
this is merely saying that the world to-day is full of 
counterfeit nobility. It is no disgrace to true coin 
to have tests applied which rigorously expose the 
false; and the real and priceless gifts which the world 
is daily receiving from the heirs of generations of 
culture can only be truly appreciated when we cease 
to place the counterfeits upon factitious pedestals of 
wealth and circumstance. 

It is inconceivable that family greatness would 
cease to be inheritable were the transmission of wealth 
made impossible. For the inheritance of character is 
one of the most dependable and uniform forces in 
Nature's armory. The principal cloud upon its repu- 
tation to-day lies in the fact, known to all observers, 
that where large wealth is transmitted, the gift of 
character often seems to fail. It fails, however, for 
a very good reason, — because the natural incentives 
to its development are withdrawn ; because the wealth 
given as a help to character really proves to be a hin- 
drance. But withdraw this seeming help and real 
hindrance; allow each gift of really noble character 
to develop on a basis of real need and strong incen- 
tive, and, while we should give a freer field to noble 
gifts sprung from the common lot, we should but em- 
phasize the grandeur of the inheritance of tradition- 
ary culture, breeding and nobility. Hereditary 
strength, self-dependence and earnest effort, — and, we 
may add, hereditary ability to earn a generous liveli- 
hood, — would come to be as common as hereditary 



418 CONCLUSION. 

culture and breeding; and the cheerful and unosten- 
tatious conditions of common life would be graced on 
every hand by gifts of character and refinement 
which might well add lustre to the pinnacle of human 
station. 

But we must not for a moment picture society as 
presenting a dull and tiresome level even in the mat- 
ter of material success. The self-made men would not 
only still be with us, but in vastly greater numbers 
than ever; for every unique power which lay in the 
race in germ would have full opportunity and incen- 
tive to develop. There would be no substantial prizes 
distributed except to effort and achievement, and all 
the dreams of men, being as dreams foredoomed to 
futility, would necessarily transmute themselves into 
action. Necessarily the standard of achievement 
would be set high, the concentration of effort needed 
to reach the upper places would be great, and the 
prizes of wealth and honor for rare success would be 
surpassingly splendid. 

But what would our new and superior breed of self- 
made men do with their wealth ? Manifestly they 
would not be likely to rear their families in palaces of 
rare splendor only to leave them to share the common 
lot in after years. And here our apologist for the 
Millionaires* tells us that there is but one thing they 
could do with it; they would be practically forced to 
spend it in riotous living and bestial indulgences. 
Forbidden to found an honored family line they 
would have no resource but to sow tares. 

We can only vaguely wonder what must be the 
personal experience and the mental processes leading 

* W. H. Mallock, " Aristocracy and Evolution." 



Chap. xxiv. FINE CLAY AND COMMON CLAY. 419 

to such a forecast. For the conspicuous examples we 
can call to mind of men of great wealth to whom fate 
has denied the boon of family life illustrate the exact 
opposite of this contention. There is, we are proud 
to say, so far as we have knowledge, practically only 
one thing that such men can do with their money, — 
they are forced to make the human race their family, 
and thus join the ranks of benefactors of their kind. 

And this is evidently what our new self-made men 
would do with their wealth. Forbidden by con- 
science, by public sentiment and by law to found a 
line of licensed idlers to mock the fundamental law of 
nature they would feel the last fine thrill of reward 
for their life of effort in making all men nobler and 
better. And he who did this would found a family 
line and family tradition that would, if upheld by 
worthy descendants, make the glory of the DeVeres 
seem cheap and tawdry. 

In fact it is against the decree of nature that wealth 
should found an honored family line. Wealth can 
indeed found a line: — such lines as have freely borne 
witness for themselves in the police-court records of 
folly and wickedness. And true nobility possessed of 
wealth ean found a line that shall write a long suc- 
cession of bright names in a nation's annals. But that 
the wealth alone is ever the important element we 
think it would be impossible to show; and that the true 
nobility is ever the indispensable and all-important 
element we think it would be impossible to deny. 

The majority of the family lines which wealth has 
founded, however, are as a rule neither criminal 
nor grandly noble, — neither pure white nor unre- 
lieved black, but a neutral gray. They realize 



420 CONCLUSION. 

certain advantages, and certain other disadvantages 
from their position ; and for the rest they exhibit large 
infusions of plain, ordinary human nature. This 
latter element is usually, of course, entirely unob- 
jectionable; the bulk of mankind is necessarily ordi- 
nary. But here we have it placed in an extraordinary 
position. It is by its striking surroundings of great 
wealth raised up on a high platform, as it were, to be 
seen and admired of the world. This is, to the undis- 
cerning, the badge of leadership; this constitutes 
ample warrant for blind following of whatever errors 
are committed in high places. Here is the source of 
our apotheosis of the commonplace; hence flows the 
insensate folly of our widespread worship of the deity 
of Display and the golden calf of Fashion with 
diverted seed-grain. Raised up on a commanding 
eminence and with their trappings of pomp and cir- 
cumstance loudly calling to them to lead, our poor 
gilded paupers think they must needs speak words of 
command; and knowing not the words of wisdom they 
offer the multitude words and deeds of bitter folly. 
Deeply must the World repent some day in sackcloth 
and ashes her incredible weakness of giving the divine 
commission of social leadership into the trembling, 
bewildered grasp of poor, foolish children! 

The honored family lines of the world to-day are 
undoubtedly in the main possessed of wealth. To the 
casual observer their honor seems to rest largely on 
wealth. But the real truth of the matter is that the 
help of wealth as rendered to honor is entirely in the 
mind of the observer, — it gives its possessor an exter- 
nal dignity of circumstance which seems to sort well 



Chap. xxiv. FINE CLAY AND COMMON CLAY. 421 

with noble deeds. To the mind of the possessor, we 
opine, large wealth must always appear rather as a 
deterrent from than as an incitement to noble deeds, — 
it surrounds him with so much of the semblance of 
honor that the incitements to battle for its reality are 
sensibly impaired. 

The contention of the Fine Clay here, — that this 
situation tends to the production of true service to the 
race, — is at bottom very much like that of the social- 
ists as explained in a previous chapter. They main- 
tain that specific results flow more freely from general 
incitements than from specific incitements. They 
would put a man in a charmed world of honor and 
fine feelings, and then proclaim that he could not 
possibly prove false to his trust, — that he must pro- 
duce grand and noble deeds. But what they have 
really done is to abolish bookkeeping in this charmed 
circle of society, to weaken the evidence of connection 
between cause and effect. So far as they have done 
this they have constructed a perpetual -motion 
machine, designed to take a confused jumble of halt- 
ing motives, and from them produce a clear, definite 
and noble line of action. 

All such processes as this set at nought the most 
clearly-demonstrated conclusions of modern social 
development. A definite incentive to elicit a definite 
result, a definite reward for a definite achievement, 
a clear view of the nexus between effort and attain- 
ment, — these are the maxims on which the tre- 
mendous efficiency of modern industrial development 
is founded. The burden of proof is distinctly on him 
who, in this age of the world, maintains that the anti- 
thesis of these ideas should govern the world's pro- 



422 CONCLUSION. 

vision of incentives to secure the higher social 
desiderata. 

Now the apologists of the Fine Clay must not 
suffer themselves to forget that the World will need 
all real social desiderata just as much under our new 
regime as at present, and will have just as much to 
offer in the way of rewards, — both the more obvious 
incitements of money and the more refined ones of 
honor and appreciation. If, therefore, she fail to get 
these desiderata, — if the De Veres will not breed their 
quintessence of refinement without pay in advance, 
or if a wicked and perverse generation will not honor 
the superior fruits even when produced, — it will mark 
a distinct exception from the tried and proved rules of 
ordinary life, and the adequacy of demand and 
supply. 

But who will be our social leaders ? Who will have 
at once the finer powers necessary to achieve true 
social leadership and the large wealth necessary to 
give them their proper setting ? 

In order to answer this question we must first 
understand how much wealth is necessary to deck true 
refinement for social usefulness. Is it the wealth of 
New York society to-day or that of a hundred years 
ago % the wealth of London social leaders now or 
under Elizabeth ? Did social graces utterly depart 
from the threadbare court of the exiled Stuarts ? Has 
its comparative poverty debarred the royal family of 
Denmark from social usefulness ? 

No person, we think, can long hesitate over the 
answer to these questions. Large wealth is not in the 
least necessary as a setting to social graces; these can 



Chap. xxiv. FINE CLAY AND COMMON CLAY. 423 

rise superior to circumstances, and manifest them- 
selves under the most discouraging conditions. But 
when tremendous wealth comes to be regularly dis- 
played in connection with the occasions that are sup- 
posed to manifest the social graces, its possession 
becomes, not a natural prerequisite, but a conven- 
tional condition precedent, to their flowering. And 
the more it is thus habitually displayed the more rigor- 
ously it operates as a bar, hindering the outflow of 
the gracious influence of manners and refinement 
from their possessors to society at large, and blighting 
in their bud precious gifts of sympathy that might 
have blossomed into a wealth of roses to soften the 
thorny pathway of the race. If wealth have any other 
function than this as a social power, its manifestation 
is too occult to be plain to the outer barbarian. 

Believing this we must admit, — or claim, — that -our 
society of equal opportunity would have practically 
no leaders after the accepted model, — no definite class 
of large wealth and supposed monopoly of the gifts of 
social graces. It would, however, manifest not only 
as much refinement, culture, breeding, as our present 
society, but infinitely more, since all existing gifts of 
this sort would be free to develop themselves. For 
since the hold of any family, however refined, on large 
wealth would be, not merely precarious but certain 
soon to terminate, it would be ridiculous to associate 
permanent social powers with any transitory incidents. 
Social graces would therefore soon come to be ex- 
hibited even by their wealthy possessors without the 
questionable adornment which really mars them; and 
thenceforth no factitious adornment would be needed 
as a setting for such graces. Of course under such a 



424 CONCLUSION. 

regime no family of fine social powers could ever dis- 
appear as a social force through financial misfortune, 
since the funds of equal opportunity constantly fall- 
ing into their hands would be adequate in themselves 
to enable them to exist in comfort, and this would be 
the only material basis needed for social leadership. 

This would infallibly close the temple of Display 
forever. With all social circles everywhere opening, 
and opening only, to the true spell of social worth, — 
with the reward of social position bestowed only upon 
the achievement of real social eminence and rio;or- 
ously withheld from its wealth-born counterfeit, — the 
service of this heathen deity would be recognized as 
impossible foolishness and wickedness. Men would 
come to understand that wealth in itself could never 
buy the real rewards of effort, but that it could buy 
seed-grain; and that thus expended it could lift all 
men's aspirations above the level of material wel- 
fare. And here we get a glimpse of a vista of the 
future which we shall not try to describe. 

An iridescent dream? Most assuredly. It could 
never be realized, even given the starting-point of our 
just distribution of the Income from the Property in 
Ideas, without a long course of development which 
should to some extent change human nature. This 
we have assumed almost without argument ; only trial 
could prove the correctness of our forecast. 

But is not this true dreaming? Is it not merely a 
rational extension of our present ideals and aspira- 
tions? Is it not based upon the powers and limita- 
tions of human nature as we now know them? Does 
it not avoid calling in the aid of any superhuman 



Chap. xxiv. FINE CLAY AND COMMON CLAY. 425 

faculty or wisdom, any unfamiliar virtue or self-com- 
mand, as its efficient influences? We think so. And 
if this be admitted its function as a true, — that is, a 
possible, — dream of the future is not unimportant; 
for visions of a glorified earth have been widely dis- 
seminated in recent years that seem to us to be based 
upon assumptions contradicted by all the experience 
of the race. 

But our primary measure of justice, — our redistri- 
bution of the Income from the People's Property in 
Ideas, — rests on no dreaming. It is loudly called for 
by the conditions, hopes, fears, needs, perplexities, of 
the men of to-day. We maintain that it is the true 
end for which the advocates of such measures as old- 
age pensions and the provision of government relief 
works for the unemployed are seeking. These men 
see the need, but the help they would proffer is a 
deadly hindrance. Even-handed justice, however, 
also meets the need, and more, it raises all men into 
the sunlight of hope; but it veils not the incentives 
nor confuses the motives which have within a few 
generations transformed the earth. 

One very threatening class of dangers to our social 
welfare has received no direct consideration in this 
volume, — the dangers from the corrupt use of wealth, 
industrially and politically. The purchasing of leg- 
islatures and city councils; the corrupt political power 
of large corporations; the oppressive rule of commer- 
cial monopolies, and their terrorizing of individual 
competitors; the subtile form of bribery which 
wealthy interests utilize in the rewards of business 
advancement which they offer to their willing hench- 



426 CONCLUSION. 

men, — these are most pressing questions, threatening 
us with measureless degradation if they be not solved; 
yet our measure has not propounded any solution of 
them. 

We would not underrate the threat of these in- 
sidious maladies of our social body, but neither would 
we underrate its recuperative power. The burden of 
these iniquities falls principally on our middle classes, 
whose livelihood is threatened by their growth. But 
our middle classes contain the main part of the 
strength and competence of the nation, and when 
thoroughly aroused they can strike these reptiles 
dead. Encroachment on their rights is tending to 
work its own cure by increasing past the point of en- 
durance, while encroachment on the rights of the very 
poor tends to perpetuate itself by destroying their 
power of resistance. 

But our advocated reform would most powerfully 
aid the work of uprooting these corruptions by bring- 
ing the whole nation within the bounds of our present 
middle classes. It would furthermore remove from 
the possibility of corrupt influence a very large vote 
which is now purchasable or subject to intimidation. 
With these reinforcements of the influences now as- 
saulting the strongholds of corrupt wealth, the issue 
of the battle cannot be doubted. A nation of real 
freemen would very quickly shake off this degrading 
yoke. 



INDEX. 

(SEE ALSO BOOK AND CHAPTER HEADINGS.) 

Abuses, serious, difficulty of abolishing, 262 

Academies, colleges, universities, etc., as charities, 5o 

.Esthetic ideals, as opposed to economic, °3 

Agony and terror, inipotency of, 21 ° 

.f, . 310-313 

Altruism, 

Appraisement of individual services by competition, 314 

Archangel yoked with a brute, man an, 215 

Art, alleged benefit of luxury to, 78 

Aspiration and training, power of, ■ 215 

Associated and monopolized efficiencies, remuneration of, .... 371 
Autocracy in family relations, passing of, 289 

Banks and bankers, function of, 33 ^ 

Basal principle of our social fabric, 1 j 

Beast, the, 1" *" " ' " '." ' 010 

— , — , on terms of familiarity with Charity of Condescens on, 212 

Bellamy, Edward, parable of the Water Tank, 329 

Bequests to public uses, increasing, significance of, H* 

Bookkeeping, social, " 

Brute, man an archangel yoked with a, • ■ • j™ 

Brutish evolution contrasted with human, 267-271 

365 
Capital, efficiency of, • 

— , remuneration of, 

Centralization and decentralization, 200 

Charitable list, Mrs. B.'s, 

; World's, defined, 6 

Charities of Condescension, passing of, 274 

Charity, definition of, 

— of Condescension, defined 

, invariable characteristic of, 20o 

Equality, defined, -j 

— , right method in, ^ 

Children, shares of, in redistributed income, ... . ■ ■ /» 

23S 

■ as to inefficiency of, 

, method of reforming, 

Collection of Income, a large task, • 

203 

Commonplace, the, apotheosis of, • 42 " 

Competition, exceptions to the supremacy of, ^ 

— , free, what constitutes, " <%*& 

— , one-sided, "" 9iq 

— , really free, beneficence and competency of, 



Children's Aid Society, a real charity of equality, 

Citizen, average, faults of, -•• ■■ 

Civil service, popular apathy as to inefficiency of, A» 

Colleges, universities, etc., as charities, 

Colonel M., of Kentucky, 



428 INDEX. 

Competitive system, twin merits of, 11 

, a test of men's power for leadership, 321, 322 

Condescension, Charity of, defined, 4 

— , , invariable characteristic of, 205 

— , Charities of, passing of, 274. 

Conservatism, philosophy of, 4015 

— , — — , confusions of, 414 

Consumer, The, 146 et seq., 175-176, 349 et seq. 

Consumption and production, equation between, 331 

Contraction of currency, unwise, 241 

Corn, government distribution of, among the Romans, 203 

Criminals, shares of in redistributed Income, 278 

Currency, effect upon of redistribution of Income, 241 

Debit and credit account with the Millionaires, 87, 83 

Debts, included in the Consumer, 176 

Defective classes, shares of, in redistributed Income, 283 

Deserving, The, defined, 5 

Devil's activities, tribute levied upon, by "good" causes, 275 

Diseases of extreme wealth, not extirpated by the redistri- 
bution of the Income, 225 

Disgrace of receiving charity, defined, 5 

Display as a means of obtaining social standing, 74 et seq. 

— , sacrifices in temple of, a blow to, 225 

Dividends from People's Property in Ideas, incidents of, 196 

Driven ? Shall man be, or led, 215 

Economy of high wages, 255 

Educational charities, 55 

Efficiency, criterion by which Consumer pays, 356 

— , definition of, 362 

Equality, Charity of, defined, 4 

— , ideal of radicalism, 410 

— , checks to the advance of the cause of, 411 

— of opportunity, a regime of, 408; compared with regime of 

privilege, 415, 424 

Equation of production and consumption, 331 

Evolution, liuman and brutish contrasted, 267 271 

Excessive poverty, decorous restraint of the present move- 
ment to abolish, 221 

Expansion, political and commercial, unnatural aspiration for, 257 

Export trade, problems of, 253-262 

Extravagance, supposed benefit of to society, fallacious, 86 

Fall in prices, effect of, 233 

, only logical remedy for, 242 

Family life and traditions, 416-420 

Fecundity, a possible state bounty on, 248 

Financial interests, function of, 338 



INDEX. 429 

Foreign relations, problems of, 249 

Foreign trade, not necessarily profitable, 258 

Government, national, competency of, to collect and dis- 
burse the Income, 240 

— , — , the only possible trustee for all the people, 183 

Hereditary character, independent of hereditary wealth,. . .416-418 

High prices, taxation involved in, 232 

Honor among criminals, 279 

Human evolution contrasted with brutish, 267-271 

Hunger as an incentive to labor, 211 

Ideals as incentives to effort, 208 

— , lofty, as opposed to practical progress, 64 

Ideas, money value of, 128 

— , property in, justice of, 130 

Idleness the root of moral evil, 400 

Illegitimacy, bounty on, of old English poor-laws, 248 

Immigration, questions concerning, 250-253 

Imposture, disappearance of with Charities of Condescension, 274 

Incentives, hunger and destitution as, 213 

Income from Property in Ideas, certainty of, 231 

— , national, gross amount of, 192 

— , — , proportionate shares of capital and labor in, 387 

producing power of People's Property in Ideas, 184 et seq. 

Increment, " unearned," 392-394 

Indeterminate sentence system, 281 

Industrial development, modern era of, 125 

Inequality, corner-stone of philosophy of conservatism, 410 et seq. 

— , functional, triumph of, 413 

— , parasitic, its hope for continued existence, 414 et seq. 

Inferno, The, 109-111 

— , — , passing of, far-reaching results of, 266 

— , — , source of brutish element in society, 263 

Inflation, a measure of, 242 

Inheritances, progressive taxation of, significance of, 114 

Inherited wealth, its present function, 112 

Inheritors of small patrimonies, thrift of, 208 

Intemperance, 43, 397 

Interest, attacks upon legitimacy of, 375 379 

Ishmaelitism of business, 267 

Jurisprudence, reliance of upon torture, in the Middle Ages,.. 214 

Labor-saving machinery, adoption of hindered by excessively 

low cost of labor, 217 

, opposition to, 309 

Labor, severe and disagreeable, not really freely performed,.. 217 
— , — , how performed under free contract, 218 



430 INDEX. 

Labor union, an universal, 383 

Leadership, competent, how to secure, 272 

— , tests of men's power for, 321, 322 

Led or driven ? Shall man be, % 215 

Liquor question, 43, 398, 401, 403 

Living wages, burden of paying, 221 

Machinery, labor-saving, adoption of hindered by excessively 

low cost of labor, 217 

Mallock, W. H., 170, 419 

Malthusian law, 243-248 

Man a dual being, 215 

Margin of Productivity, 360, 366, 369 

Married Women's Property acts, 287 

Merit system, competitive, 12-18 

Middle Ages, torture as an ally of jurisprudence and religion 

in, 214 

— class, defined, 58 

Millionaire, defined, , 67 

Modern era of industrial development, 125 

Money, demand expressed in, essential characteristic of the 

Consumer, • 147 

— , desire for, as opposed to desire for commodities, main- 
spring of wealth-production, 351 

Monopolies, legal or legislative, and " trusts," 97-99, 372, 425 

Monopolized and associated efficiencies, remuneration of, 371 

Monopoly remuneration, Ricardo's law of rent a general law 

of, 357 

Moral issues in the economic field, 397 

Motive power, hunger and destitution as, 213 

, necessary to operate productive machinery, components 

of, 214 

Motives, lower, dependence of present civilization on, 214 

Mr. Van A.'s Dream, tale of, 163 

Mrs. B.'s charitable list, 1 

Nature, increase of command over, aim of human evolution,.. 272 
New York city, amount of charitable funds distributed in, . . 37 

Overproduction, Purgatorio of, 256 

Panics, causation of, 391 

Partnership relations of individual with society, 302 

Pauperism, rewards attached to, 204 

Pauperizing, definition of, 2 

Perpetual-motion machines, moral, 277 

Personal services, definition of, 361 

, Remuneration of, general law of the, 356 et seq. 

Petition, secret, of Mrs. B.'s circle, 213 



INDEX. 431 

Poor laws, English, old, evil effects of, 203 

Poverty, excessive, abolition of, Mrs. B.'s efforts for, 211 

— , — , decorous restraint of the present movement to abo.ish, 221 

Price levels of 1870-73, 233 

Production and consumption, equation between, 331 

— , definition of, 331 

Profit-sharing, 380 

Progress, human, claim that it flows from struggle for exist- 
ence, 270 

— , manifestation of under new regime, 382 

— , problems of, 298-304 

Progressive taxation of inheritances, significance of, 114 

Property in ideas, justice of, 130; limitations upon, 131-133 

Protest against extreme wealth, its present indefiniteness, 
115; underlying almost all reform movements, 116; tre- 
mendous volume of the sentimeni behind, 117; its impo- 
tence from lack of theoretic precision, 117 

Proverbial wisdom, in justification of present social system, . . 156 

Reformers, " court-plaster," 96 

Reforming instinct deep-seated in present generation, 263 

, essential conservatism of, 264 

Register, quasi-judicial duties of, 196 

Registry offices, 195 

Remuneration of personal services, general law of the, 356 et seq. 

Rent, Ricardo's law of, . , 357 et seq., 390 

Responsibility, universal, resulting from redistribution of In- 
come, 291-294 

Revenue from People's Property in Ideas, collection of, 198 

Revolution, cost of political freedom obtained through the,... 223 

Sanctified trickery to enlist the help of the devil, 276 

Saving necessarily involves immediate spending, 336 

Scripture, quotations from, in justification of present social 

system, 156 

Seed-grain, deluge of, assumed detrimental effects of, 202 

Self-made man, The, 12-14 

■ — , reverie of, 136 

Self-made men, new and superior, 418 

, their disposition of their wealth, 419 

Sermon on the Mount, impracticability ot, 213 

Services, personal, remuneration of, general law of the, 356 et seq. 

Slavery, cost of abolishing, 233 

— , movement for abolition of, 203 

— , relics of, 259 

Small patrimonies, inheritors of, thrift of, 208 

Smith Family Railroad, tale of, 160 

Social consideration as part payment for severe and disagree- 
able labor, 218 



432 INDEX. 

Social consideration attaching to idleness, 206 

— edifice, not structurally changed, 265 

— equality a leveling up, 219 

— leadership, divine commission of, in unworthy hands, 420 

, amount of wealth necessary for, 422-424 

■ — life, alleged benefit of luxury to, 77 

— organism, its analogy to the physical body, 107 

— standing as an ideal, 74 et seq. 

Socialism, 309 et seq.; logical basis of its propaganda, 91 

Spending necessarily involved in saving, 336 

Struggle for existence, passing of, 266 

, human, limitation of, 271 

Tariff measure, special skill demanded in drafting, 240 

Taxation involved in collection of the Income, incidence of, . . 229 

— of British government during Napoleonic wars, 228 

Thrift, typical of the middle class, 208 

— not characteristic of the very poor, 209 

— , waste involved in learning, 210 

Torture, as an economic force, an anachronism, 215 

— , reliance of jurisprudence and religion upon, in the Middle 

Ages, 214 

Trades-unions, philosophy of, 268 

" Trusts," and business monopolies, 97 99, 372, 425 

Unearned Increment, 392, 394 

Union, Labor, an universal, 383 

Universities, colleges, etc., as charities, 55 

Utopia, burdens of, 220 

Van A., Mr., fecundity of, mathematically treated, 246 

Very Learned Man, tale of, 158 

Vice, definition of, 400 

Walker, Francis A., quoted, 212n. 

Washington, Sally, case of, 207 

Waste involved in learning thrift, 210 

Water Tank, Bellamy's parable of the, 329 

Wealth as a foundation for family lines, 419 

Wealth displayed in social life a bar to development of social 

graces, 423 

Wealth, extreme, diseases of, not extirpated by the redistri- 
bution of the Income 225 

Well-paid service, economy of, 223 

Women, shares of, in redistributed Income, 286 

Work ? Why does the laborer, 212n. 

World's charitable list, defined, * 



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